Launching your own instances

Last updated on 2023-05-04 | Edit this page

Do I need to create my own instances?

If you are:

  • teaching at or attending a centrally organized Data Carpentry workshop,
  • a Maintainer for one of the Genomics lessons, or
  • contributing to the Genomics lessons,

The Carpentries staff will create AMI instances for you. Please contact team@carpentries.org.

If you are:

  • teaching at a self-organized workshop,
  • working through these lessons on your own outside of a workshop,
  • practicing your skills after a workshop, or
  • using these lessons for a teaching demonstration as part of your Instructor checkout for The Carpentries,

you will need to create your own AMI instances using the launching your own AMI instance instructions.

If you are:

  • considering what types of cloud computing resources are appropriate for you
  • interested in modifying the AMI used in this workshop,
  • want to create your own AMI from scratch, or
  • want to use these lessons on a different cloud resources,

read the information and instructions below.

Choosing a cloud platform

The most important thing about The Cloud is choice - instead of purchasing a physical computer, you can obtain on-demand computing at almost any scale. This power comes with advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages of Cloud Computing

  • Access large amounts of computing power on demand
  • Full administrative rights - install anything
  • Use pre-configured images (software already installed)

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

  • Cloud computing costs money (you must keep track of your costs)
  • If you need help, you may not have a local system administrator
  • Images may be poorly documented (you may not be clear on what is installed, or how to use it)

Cloud platform choices

There are several cloud providers to choose from. Some scientific clouds may either be free or allocate resources competitively. Commercial clouds are can be very powerful, but choice can be overwhelming. We will cover as much as we you need to get through the Data Carpentry lessons, but you will ultimately need to learn things not covered here so see the documentation below:

Commercial Clouds

Open Science Clouds

Please select the platform you wish to use for the exercises:

AWS (Amazon EC2 instances)

  • See the detailed instructions on launching an Amazon EC2 instance for this workshop.
    • You can launch any publicly available image by changing the AMI that you load in step 4 on that page.
    • You can choose not to load an AMI at all, and install your own software later by skipping step 4 on that page.
    • If you want to launch a different set of resources- more processors, more disk space, different operating system, etc; you can choose a different option at step 5.
    • For more detailed instructions, and how-tos for other changes consult EC2 Getting Started.