Cloud Data Storage ?

Question

[ff.cc.cc]

Cloud services are often recommended by IT providers and resellers as the most effective solution for data storage and even high performance computing.

1) Does anybody have evaluated these tools for usability and performance ? e.g. the crossbow aligner claims high performance on amazon EC2.

2) Since we are managing reserved data (personal genotypes and genomic profiles e.g.) and different countries have different laws to regulate personal-data management, which are legal implications/risks of putting such data in the cloud ?

Would you consider the phisical location of the server ? or only on the policy of the provider ?

Thanks

[Lars Juhl Jensen]

Although cloud services are interesting, I do not see this question having anything to do with bioinformatics directly. Do you intend to use cloud computing for bioinformatics? Which kinds of data are you considering to store in the cloud?

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If you consider NGS data-storage and data security a bioinformatic challenge, you could better understand my question. Please refer to the scenario described by M. Baker in "Next-generation sequencing: adjusting to data overload" (doi:10.1038/nmeth0710-495)

[Istvan Albert]

Note that the word "compute cloud" is greatly overloaded and can mean anything from renting individual computers to using a custom replicated data storage system like Amazon S3 or the Google databases.

For bioinformatics applications the usage scenarios are vastly different. You should restate this question in a more focused fashion, with one domain of application in mind.

[ff.cc.cc]

I know the cloud-fashion is pervasive. Hope now, to be more bioinformatic-focused

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

1. You should look for papers like this Searching for SNPs with cloud computing
2. You will need to refer to the exact wording that describes precisely the terms of use for your data.

No one here can give you a good advice on legal matters. The people that are willing to advise on a public forum are not competent, those that are qualified lawyers will know the dangers of commenting on public forum therefore will never do it.