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Introduction

What is "the Cloud"?


A “one-stop shop” for high-demand computing services delivered across the internet

Four purposes for the cloud: Compute Power, File Storage, Database Management, Data Sharing

The cloud offers us the ability to “rent” a better computer to do the work our personal computers can’t. Examples of Cloud usage include:

  • Compute Power: Buying access to greater computing power to handle large and complex analyses
  • Data Storage: Storage of massive amounts of data
  • Database Management: Create, organize, and search databases of massive size
  • Data Sharing: International sharing of data with collaborators and the public


Advantages to the Cloud


Four reasons to use the cloud: Cost, Global Access, Speed & Performance, and Reproducibility


Meet your commercial cloud providers

List of commerical cloud providers: Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services

For today's workshop, we will be using the Amazon Web Services Platform (AWS).


NCBI and the Cloud


NCBI offers several tools for use in the cloud including the SRA database, BLAST, Genome Workbench, and several other tools in Docker containers

NCBI has made several of its most popular tools more accessible in the cloud including:

  • The SRA database sequence data and metadata tables
  • The BLAST command line tool
  • Dockerized versions of many other command line tools
  • Genome Workbench

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Last Reviewed: June 24, 2022