NHGRI Analysis Visualization and Informatics Lab-space

FAQ

Overview

What is an AnVIL Workspace?

An AnVIL workspace is a stand-alone computational sandbox that provides a secure collaborative place to organize data, run and monitor analysis pipelines, and perform interactive analysis using applications such as Jupyter Notebooks. Each Workspace is associated with one GCP billing account that is charged for all compute, egress, and storage costs incurred within the Workspace.

What is Terra and how does it relate to AnVIL?

Terra is the compute engine of AnVIL. Terra is a secure and scalable platform for biomedical researchers to access data, run analysis tools, and collaborate easily with others. Terra operates on Google Cloud Platform and all costs incurred by the user are billed directly to the user, providing users control to fully manage their resources.

Terra is the analysis unit of AnVIL, where users can analyze, process, visualize, and share data. Terra currently offers access to Jupyter Notebooks with support for Python and R for interactive analysis and access to the Workflow Description Language (WDL) for batch processing of many samples using pipelines. Terra also provides access to interactive analysis tools with RStudio, Bioconductor, and Galaxy.

Security is paramount to AnVIL. Any security concerns should be communicated to the AnVIL team (help@lists.anvilproject.org).

What is Terra Data Repo and how does it relate to AnVIL?

Terra Data Repo (TDR) is the data management system of AnVIL. It is a platform designed to make it easier for dataset owners to share and for researchers to access large datasets. It addresses the challenges researchers and data custodians face using and delivering extensive datasets in the cloud. Learn more about TDR in the Terra documentation.

What is Dockstore and how does it relate to AnVIL?

Dockstore is the workflow repository of AnVIL. Dockstore hosts WDL workflows and supports additional workflow languages. Users can select workflows from Dockstore and make them accessible on their Terra account to use for their own analysis.

Data Security, Management, and Access Procedures
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