Incurring Cloud Costs
Various costs associated with cloud computing
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Various costs associated with cloud computing
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Platforms within BDC use a combination of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for storing and analyzing data in the ecosystem. Researchers on BioData Catalyst begin to incur fees when they use the ecosystem in one of the following ways:
Data Storage: When a researcher uploads their own data or stores derived results on a cloud environment, they will begin to incur data storage costs on the platform their instance is located on.
Computing / Analysis: When a researcher runs a task in a platform they will incur charges based on their usage.
Egress charges: When a researcher transfers data out of cloud storage.
Platform Support: When projects require a significant amount of support researchers may need to purchase time from ecosystem platforms, though standard support is provided free of charge.
For more information on each of these categories, see below. You may also use the following links to view platform-specific guidance for or .
In general, storage charges are billed on all files in a workspace that belong to that project. This includes all files a researcher uploads to BioData Catalyst and any results files generated by their workflows and analysis. This does NOT include controlled dataset files hosted by BioData Catalyst.
Storage costs vary based on the amount of data a researcher stores, what type of disk or service they use for storing the data, and the services they select (AWS or GCP). For the most up-to-date information on storage rates, see these articles on storage and Storage.
Compute costs vary and depend on a range of factors including:
The platform and cloud infrastructure provider where an analysis is performed
Workspace & cloud instance settings
Length of time to workflow completion
By default any data uploaded or generated in a workspace is stored on a single cloud provider instance. If a researcher opts to move these files, they will be charged Egress fees, otherwise known as Data Transfer fees. These fees will occur if they:
Transfer files to another cloud provider, OR
Download files to a local machine
Fees for data egress vary based on service providers and what actions a researcher takes.
Each NHLBI BioData Catalyst platform offers tools and tutorials to help you estimate your cloud costs. For information on these tools and how to run them, please see the below articles.
BioData Catalyst provides general support for researchers on all ecosystem platforms free of charge. If a researcher anticipates needing a large amount of support for specialized activities, such as organizing a large training workshop, they can reach out to the BioData Catalyst Coordinating Center () and/or the platform liaisons to discuss these needs as they develop their proposal.
For more help on estimating your anticipated cloud costs, please contact the .