What's the best cloud computing platform to build a bioinformatic VM?

Question

I work in a research group where we have a lot of people doing bioinformatic analyses who don't have much knowledge of computing or very good laptops. Our computing cluster is very badly administered making it difficult to use. What I want to do is make a cloud-based linux VM available to group members, where I can manage all aspects of the environment to make analyses easy and reproducible across the research group. I'm new to cloud computing, so was wondering if anyone has advice on where to start? Criteria I'm looking for are:

• Graphical linux environment where they can run GUI applications (e.g. RStudio)
• Access to 8 - 16 CPUs and about 32Gb RAM
• Space to work with data sets where the raw data may be several Gb
• Not too expensive going forward for the research group
• Easy for me to set up and manage a VM image (I'm no expert - good scripting / bioinformatic skills and can manage a linux machine and some experience writing Docker containers)

I know there are various options out there, but any pointers would be much appreciated along with advice or considerations based on your experience!

Answer 1

I was looking for a virtual private server for other purposes and bumped against CONTABO some months ago. Compared with several other alternatives, it represents the best compromise to me between cost and equipment.

Their basic configuration allows you to choose the OS you like and use 4 vCPU Cores, 8 GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe or 200 GB SSD, and 32 TB Traffic - Unlimited Incoming for around €5/month.

Having a VM at your disposal you can configure it as you want. I am not sure how to run GUI apps from it. You may want to ask them for support.

The configuration you desire seems to be the one they call CLOUD VPS L that costs €14.99/month.

Give a look here: https://contabo.com/en/