We are pleased to announce that we have made public an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of our enterprise electronic notebook iExperiment. The creation of the iExperiment public AMI is based on two of our earlier posts Setup of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Server for iExperiment and Setup of iExperiment on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Server. A three-part tutorial is available to guide you through the creation of an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance from the iExperiment AMI, configuration of iExperiment, and adding your first researcher.
iExperiment Public Machine Image on the Amazon Management Console
Why We Choose to Use Amazon Web Services
- Control of Experiment Information: A research organization’s experiment records are the foundation of its intellectual property, and, as such, must be stored in a way that allows the research organization to maintain control over these records. We feel that Software as a Service (SAAS) electronic notebook solutions do not offer the same level of control as having your experimental data on a server you control.
- Convenience of Cloud Computing: Using an Amazon Machine Image allows us to set up the iExperiment server for you. All you need to do is configure the instance and start the instance’s services. In addition, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is one of the lower cost cloud service providers.
- Support: Amazon has one of the largest cloud services user communities to draw upon to answer questions that you may have about running your EC2 instance. You can also always contact us at here at colabrativ.com.
- Server Security: Amazon facilities are Statement on Auditing Standard No. 70 (SAS70) compliant. They completed the Type II audit in 2009, so you know they are doing everything they can to keep your data secure.
Other iExperiment Hosting Options
Amazon Web Services may not be the right solution for you for any number of reasons, including: AWS places the responsibility of the enterprise application setup and maintenance on the client’s administrator; or, you may not be comfortable with the security in a cloud computing environment. If this is the case, you can contact us and we can work with you to install our electronic notebook, iExperiment, either at your facility or at another full-service SAS70-compliant cloud service provider.