Help:Labs labs labs - Wikitech
Jump to content
From Wikitech
(Redirected from
Labs labs labs
Prior to June 2017, there were several different Wikimedia technical projects with "
Labs
" in their name. Depending on the context, people may have been referring to one of these three (or others). To avoid further confusion, use their proper name. Not everyone remembers the labs, labs, labs lessons of the past so we also have new products to add to the disambiguation list presented here.
Nutshell
Wikimedia Cloud VPS
(formerly
Wikimedia Labs
), a cloud computing infrastructure (maintained by Wikimedia Cloud Services).
Toolforge
(formerly
Tool Labs
), a platform for web services and bots run by volunteers (maintained by Wikimedia Cloud Services).
Beta Cluster
(was collegially called
Beta Labs
), a small MediaWiki farm hosted in Wikimedia Labs, running the latest master of MediaWiki.
Wikitech
(this wiki) was formerly called "Labs console", because the OpenStack management software for Wikimedia Labs (now Wikimedia Cloud VPS) was installed and operated from a set of Special pages on the Wikitech wiki. The
labsconsole:
interwiki prefix is still supported today for compatibility of linking between pages. It has the same destination as the
wikitech:
interwiki prefix. The Wikitech wiki database is still internally named
labswiki
, because it is difficult to rename databases
, and thus "Labswiki" is sometimes used to refer to Wikitech wiki.
Test Kitchen
(formerly
Experimentation Lab
xLab
Metrics Platform
) is a collection of systems for enabling collection of data on feature usage and analyzing that data.
Wikimedia Cloud VPS
Wikimedia Cloud VPS
(formerly
Wikimedia Labs
or
Labs
) provides cloud computing infrastructure for people doing Wikimedia-related work. The virtual machines are powered by the
OpenStack
software, administered through
Horizon
(and historically through special pages on this wiki). The environment also provides auxiliary services, such as shared NFS storage, and access to live replica databases of Wikimedia Foundation wikis.
Toolforge and Beta Cluster are just two of many projects run on virtual machines hosted in Wikimedia Cloud VPS.
See this
list of other projects
, for other examples.
More information at
Portal:Cloud VPS
Toolforge
Toolforge
(formerly
Tool Labs
) is a platform for volunteers to easily run web services, bots and other applications. Users deploy applications directly onto a shared Grid Engine, and use other shared services (such as Redis). Users have the comfort of not needing to become system administrators of any (virtual) servers or hardware, instead the platform is entirely provided by the
Toolforge admin team
All web applications are served through a subdomain of toolforge.org. Previously tools with web applications were served though
. Toolforge supersedes the "
Toolserver
" previously run by Wikimedia Deutschland.
The Toolforge platform is powered by Wikimedia Cloud VPS, but this aspect is not relevant to its users.
More information at
Help:Toolforge
Beta Cluster
The
Beta Cluster
is a small wiki farm used to test code changes that affect Wikimedia wikis. It runs the latest alpha version of the
MediaWiki
software and closely matches the configuration of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites.
The Beta Cluster is served from virtual machines hosted by Wikimedia Cloud VPS, in a project named "deployment-prep". Unfortunately, renaming that project is not possible at the moment.
The main portal is at
beta.wmcloud.org
, with a beta version of English Wikipedia at
en.wikipedia.beta.wmcloud.org
. The Beta Cluster originally launched in 2012 at
beta.wmflabs.org
. Following the rebrand of Wikimedia Labs to Wikimedia Cloud VPS in 2017, the Beta Cluster moved to the
beta.wmcloud.org
domain (
T289318
).
Avoid referring to Beta Cluster as merely "Beta", as that is easily mistaken for the following:
Beta Features
, a MediaWiki extension for incubating new features, deployed both in production on live sites and in the Beta Cluster.
Mobile Beta
features.
MediaWiki beta
release.
More information at
Beta Cluster
Test Kitchen
Experimentation Lab
xLab
) was a 2025 rebranding of the systems and services formerly known as
Metrics Platform
. They were later renamed again as
Test Kitchen
. You can use the Test Kitchen to create instrumentation that captures click rates, conversion rates, and other metrics.
Other usage of the term lab
The database of the former Beta Cluster landing page (deployment.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org) was originally also named
labswiki
The
Grafana
installation for WMCS was historically hosted at
(see
grafana.wikimedia.org#Wikimedia Cloud Services
).
See also
mw:Beta beta beta
mw:Naming things
Portal:Cloud VPS/Bare Metal
References
T83609#6562859
T72108
T198673
Retrieved from "
Category
Cloud Services
Help
Labs labs labs
Add topic