Genomics in the Azure Cloud

Preface

Genomics in the Azure Cloud is a book that attempts to bridge the gap between general cloud computing architecture in Microsoft Azure and scientific computing for bioinformatics and genomics.¹ This is meant to be a practical guide to architecting performant solutions in Azure for a variety of bioinformatics use cases.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is written for people with experience in bioinformatics and genomics but not necessarily cloud computing. This book can also be valuable for those who are cloud engineers looking to get a better understanding of how cloud architecture should work for bioinformatics.

In many university programs, bioinformatics students are exposed to technical concepts to analyze genetic data. Then, they may also be taught how to use on-premises high-performance computing (HPC) environments (clusters) to run larger workloads. These skills will be valuable when transitioning to the cloud. So don’t worry, all the skills you learned in grad school aren’t for naught.

Many online resources for cloud-enabled bioinformatics focus only on human genomics and, more specifically, how to use the Broad Institute’s set of tools (such as GATK, Picard, Cromwell, etc.) in the cloud. I’d like to generalize this book a bit more since, in my experience, people use bits and pieces of software from all over the place, combining them to make a patchwork of tools to fit their specific needs. Also, as an infectious disease guy, I have used lots of different tools ...