Galaxy Cloud embraces the GVL

In 2009, we orchestrated deployment of the entire Galaxy platform on the cloud enabling researchers to deploy a private, production-quality, and scalable Galaxy server within minutes using just a web browser. Over the following years, led by Melbourne Bioinformatics, the Genomics Virtual Laboratory (GVL) was developed as a cloud-based platform for bioinformatics. In addition to Galaxy, the GVL made a suite of tools available on the same system creating a bioinformtics data analysis workbench.

Starting with the Galaxy 17.09 release, we have merged the two solutions for gaining easy access to Galaxy-on-the-Cloud. Going forward, when wanting to use Galaxy on a cloud provider, please launch the Genomics Virtual Lab appliance from CloudLaunch.

The GVL comes with all the same functionality as the standalone Galaxy CloudMan did including easy setup, cluster scaling, Galaxy admin user management, etc. In addition, each launched GVL comes with the following application services:

• A dedicated Jupyter Notebook server
• A dedicated RStudio server
• Remote desktop access (via browser)
• An upload folder for easier data sharing
• A dashboard for managing all running services

We are excited about this development because it helps make data analysis more accessible, more comprehensive, and brings more people together.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.