Training Infrastructure as a Service

Helena Rasche; Cameron Hyde; John Davis; Simon Gladman; Nate Coraor; Anthony Bretaudeau; Gianmauro Cuccuru; Wendi Bacon; Beatriz Serrano-Solano; Jennifer Hillman-Jackson; Saskia Hiltemann; Miaomiao Zhou; Björn Grüning; Andrew Stubbs

doi:10.1093/gigascience/giad048

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Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Training Infrastructure as a Service

Helena Rasche, Cameron Hyde, John Davis, Simon Gladman, Nate Coraor, Anthony Bretaudeau, Gianmauro Cuccuru, Wendi Bacon, Beatriz Serrano-Solano, Jennifer Hillman-Jackson, …

GigaScience, Vol.12, pp.1-8

2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giad048

PMCID: PMC10316688

PMID: 37395629

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Abstract

Galaxy

remote training

Teaching/Learning

training

Background: Hands-on training, whether in bioinformatics or other domains, often requires significant technical resources and knowledge to set up and run. Instructors must have access to powerful compute infrastructure that can support resource-intensive jobs running efficiently. Often this is achieved using a private server where there is no contention for the queue. However, this places a significant prerequisite knowledge or labor barrier for instructors, who must spend time coordinating deployment and management of compute resources. Furthermore, with the increase of virtual and hybrid teaching, where learners are located in separate physical locations, it is difficult to track student progress as efficiently as during in-person courses. Findings: Originally developed by Galaxy Europe and the Gallantries project, together with the Galaxy community, we have created Training Infrastructure-as-a-Service (TIaaS), aimed at providing user-friendly training infrastructure to the global training community. TIaaS provides dedicated training resources for Galaxy-based courses and events. Event organizers register their course, after which trainees are transparently placed in a private queue on the compute infrastructure, which ensures jobs complete quickly, even when the main queue is experiencing high wait times. A built-in dashboard allows instructors to monitor student progress. Conclusions: TIaaS provides a significant improvement for instructors and learners, as well as infrastructure administrators. The instructor dashboard makes remote events not only possible but also easy. Students experience continuity of learning, as all training happens on Galaxy, which they can continue to use after the event. In the past 60 months, 504 training events with over 24,000 learners have used this infrastructure for Galaxy training.

Details

Title: Training Infrastructure as a Service
Authors: Helena Rasche (Corresponding Author) - Avans University of Applied Sciences
Cameron Hyde (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
John Davis (Author) - Johns Hopkins University
Simon Gladman (Author) - The University of Melbourne
Nate Coraor (Author) - The Open University
Anthony Bretaudeau (Author) - University of Rennes (Rennes, France)
Gianmauro Cuccuru (Author) - University of Freiburg
Wendi Bacon (Author) - The Open University
Beatriz Serrano-Solano (Author) - Pennsylvania State University
Jennifer Hillman-Jackson (Author) - European Molecular Biology Organization
Saskia Hiltemann (Author) - Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
Miaomiao Zhou (Author) - Avans University of Applied Sciences
Björn Grüning (Author) - University of Freiburg
Andrew Stubbs (Author) - Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
Publication details: GigaScience, Vol.12, pp.1-8
Publisher: BioMed Central Ltd.
Date published: 2023
DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giad048
ISSN: 2047-217X
PMID: 37395629; PMC10316688
Copyright note: © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press GigaScience. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Grant note: SFB 992/1 2012 / Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) 031 A538A/A538C; 031L0101B/031L0101C / Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung 2U24HG006620 / National Human Genome Research Institute
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99739598302621
Output Type: Journal article

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