Are there institutions/companies which provide paid access to computational resources?

Question

[Rahul Sharma]

Hi all,

Mammalian whole Genome/Exome Sequencing data analysis in particular de-novo assembly based projects usually require >512 Gbs or even >1TB RAM. I get such dataset twice or thrice a year. Instead of buying a computational machine with this much of RAM will cost >10,000 Euros. Are there any institutions/companies based in Europe which provide paid access to such massive RAM computational clusters by taking care of data privacy and security?

Thanks for your feedback! Rahul

Answer 1

[Rahul Sharma]

Thanks guys for the helpful comments. Here are the services I could short-list along with the pricing information:

Google Compute: https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing?authuser=1

Microsoft Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/

Amazon AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ , https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/

For me Google Compute fits well for computation intensive jobs.

Hope this will be helpful.

Best Rahul

Answer 2

[GenoMax]

Google compute, Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS should all fit the bill. Google compute offers machines up to 3.75 TB of RAM and 160 vCPUs. Others likely do the same.

[Friederike]

except those are not based in Europe

[GenoMax]

They have local data centers all around the world. You can choose which region your data stays in.

[Friederike]

How does that work jurisdiction-wise? Wouldn't that still be determined by the company's head quarter?

[GenoMax]

Google/Amazon/Microsoft should all have European subsidiaries/business offices. When you sign service agreements they will generally be through that local offices/authorized reseller. This is where you make sure to get your institutional lawyers involved so the i's are dotted and t's are crossed.

If you are doing this as an individual then you need to educate yourself (read that 400 page service agreement) and hope for the best.