Cloud Computation and Storage

Introduction

OmicsBox utilizes OmicsCloud, BioBam's Scientific Cloud Computing Platform, for executing many bioinformatics tools, providing a secure and scalable solution for data analysis. OmicsCloud is an AWS-based system designed for high-performance computing (HPC), optimized to support demanding bioinformatics algorithms efficiently. Users of OmicsBox can execute these bioinformatics tools and pipelines without the complexities of setup or maintenance, enabling scalable and parallelized cloud data analysis.

Additionally, OmicsBox offers CloudStorage services allowing users to save local storage space by storing data directly in the cloud, facilitating easy data access and sharing among colleagues.

Cloud Computation

Cloud Units

OmicsBox offers a variety of tools that operate through cloud computing, incurring costs associated with CPU usage, data storage, and transfer. These expenses are quantified as Cloud Units, which reflect the consumption of computational resources like CPU time and data volume. The demand for computational power varies across different tools based on their algorithms, input data, and parameters set by users.

Despite these costs, most tools within OmicsBox can be accessed at no additional charge with an active subscription.

Currently, OmicsBox charges for cloud usage only for features related to sequence Alignments and Assembly (refer to the list below). The consumption of Cloud Units by these features is based on the duration (CPU seconds) required for their completion. All other functionalities within OmicsBox are available at no additional cost as part of your subscription.

• Functional Annotation Module

• Alignments: Blast, Custom Database Blast (used also via KEGG), Diamond and InterProScan

• Genome Analysis Module

• Assembly: Abyss, Spades, Flye

• Alignments: BWA, Bowtie

• Transcriptomics Module

• Assembly: Trinity

• Alignments: Star, BWA

• Metagenomics Module:

• Assembly: MegaHit, Meta-Spades

Cloud Files

The "Cloud Files" view allows to navigate through the files stored in the cloud. This view can be opened from the menu View > Cloud Files.
Every user has an individual space in the cloud. The contextual menu allows to manage the files available in the cloud.
Drag&Drop can be used to copy a file or a folder either from the local computer or from the "Local Files" tab into the cloud.

Share Files

The "Share" option in the Cloud Files context menu allows to share private files with others using a link.
When a file is shared a link icon is displayed for that file in the "Shared" column.
Anyone with the shared file link can download the file using a web browser.
If a file is already shared, the "Copy Shared Link" menu option allows to copy the same link for the file.
The "Unshare" option can be used to make a file private again.
A link is not the same between shares if a file has been unshared. It is different.

Currently there are some limitations regarding the sharing functionality:

• You can share files, not directories.
• You can get a link to a file, but cannot share the file with another specific user only.

Review Cloud Usage

The computation and storage costs can be seen in the "Cloud Usage" view. This view can be opened from the menu View > Cloud Usage.

This view shows:

• Used Storage: The amount of storage that the user’s data occupies in the cloud.
• Estimated Monthly Cost: The number of units that will be charged by the end of the month for the current amount of data stored. The first 5GB are free for each user every month. The data cost is measured daily.
• Available CloudUnits.

For more details on pricing and cloud units consumption please visit the Cloud Computation page on our website.