Genomics in the AWS Cloud

CHAPTER 6Building Your Environment in the AWS Cloud

In this chapter, we'll walk through the process of setting up resources in three AWS services that any genomics project will require: Virtual Private Cloud networking, Elastic Compute Cloud compute power, and Super Simple Storage.

Setting Up a Virtual Private Cloud

To have Elastic Compute Cloud instances in the AWS cloud and have them connect to anything, we need to establish a virtual private cloud (VPC). As you learned in Chapter 5, a VPC is a network inside the AWS infrastructure. You can think of it as a sort of virtual Internet Protocol (IP) network, similar to what you probably have at home and at work (the Ethernet and Wi-Fi networks that connect computers and other devices). Like physical IP networks, VPCs can include subnets (with which network-connected devices are separated from each other by means of their IP addresses), routers and firewalls (which connect subnets to one another in configurable ways, and gateways (which allow an IP network to communicate with other networks, usually including the Internet).

There is a lot to be written and understood about VPCs, but most of it does not apply to the work of genomics researchers. All we need to do is set up a simple VPC with a single subnet to host whatever AWS computing resources we need to perform our genomics work.

To set up a VPC, log into the AWS Console and navigate to the Virtual Private Cloud service, either by choosing it from the (giant) list of options ...