Try out iExperiment, our enterprise electronic notebook, for free. You can access the current trial version of the iExperiment machine image on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Using an AWS cloud server allows you complete control of the data that you put in iExperiment. Amazon refers to its cloud servers as Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 for short. Amazon is one of the lower cost cloud service providers. AWS is Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS70) compliant. The Type II audit was completed in 2009 (see AWS Completes SAS70 Type II Audit announcement). Thus, one can be comfortable that one’s data are secure.
To get started, you need to establish an AWS account, described in the Get Started with EC2 guide. Then follow our three part video tutorial on setting up iExperiment on AWS. The tutorial describes:
Setup of the Amazon Web Services for iExperiment
- Creating a Security Group (a set of Firewall settings) for iExperiment using the AWS Management Console
- Creating a Key Pair to access the iExperiment EC2 instance in the AWS Management Console
- Creating an iExperiment EC2 instance from the public iExperiment machine image on AWS in the AWS Management Console
- Creating an Elastic IP address and associating it with an iExperiment EC2 instance using the AWS Management Console. We will not go over how to associate the iExperiment domain name with an IP address, because this is domain name server-dependent.
Configuring the iExperiment EC2 Instance
- Logging into the iExperiment EC2 instance using PuTTY
- Updating the iExperiment EC2 instance using yum
- Configuration of the mail service properties file (mail.properties) used by iExperiment to send messages to researchers.
- Starting the MySQL, Apache and Tomcat services on the iExperiment EC2 instance
- Changing the root password to the MySQL database. The iExperiment AWS machine image has the iExperiment schema preloaded on an installed MySQL database.
- Instructions on adding your institution and primary administrator for iExperiment to the application
- Review and accept the Software Evaluation Agreement
- Changing the iExperiment’s MySQL password in your EC2 instance
- Changing the your iExperiment password
Adding Researchers to iExperiment
- Adding a researcher to iExperiment in the administrative application
- Associating a researcher with a Permissions group
- Looking at the Permissions group interface
If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us.