Workstations
A workstation is a virtual computer in the cloud with pre-installed and pre-configured scientific software applications. Workstations can be used for a broad range of tasks, such as the examples below:
- Interactively visualize and analyze data with JupyterLab (Python) and RStudio Server (R)
- Develop, execute, and debug workflows with VS Code
- Train and execute machine learning (ML) and simulation models
This section describes what workstations are and how you can create, use, and manage them for your R&D.
Anatomy of a workstation
Workstations have two components: software and hardware. When users create workstations, they can configure both their software and hardware.
- Software blueprint: The software blueprint defines the operating system and software applications that the workstation provides, such as AlphaFold2, COPASI, DeepChem, JupyterLab, and RStudio Server, and how users can access those applications. Currently, each blueprint provides Ubuntu Linux and specialized software applications for one type of data analysis or simulation. More information about the available options is here.
- Hardware blueprint: The hardware blueprint defines the compute resources available to the workstation, such as the number of CPUs and the amounts of memory and temporary local storage. More information about the available options is here.
Life cycle of a workstation
Similar to desktop and laptop PCs, workstations have three states: running (on), stopped (off), and terminated (discarded). Within 2-4 minutes of its creation, our OS will automatically transition your workstation to the running state. Once your workstation is running, you will then be able to manage its cost by stopping or terminating it. Similar to PCs, it typically takes a few seconds for our OS to transition a workstation among the running, stopped, and terminated states.
| State | Description | Capabilities | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Running | Similar to the "on" state of a PC | Run software, data I/O | $$: processors, memory, and storage |
| Stopped | Similar to the "off" state of a PC | Persist data | $: storage |
| Terminated | Similar to a discarded PC | - | - |