Platform
The platform, which is accessed via user workspaces, will enable discovery of local and federated cohorts and datasets and provide seamless access to a suite of tools and workflows that enable reproducible data analysis and cross-consortium projects. These will be interfaced with a choice of computing infrastructures that are feasible for African scientists, including public and private Cloud and local HPC facilities and, where necessary, protected through authorization and authentication access protocols. The first implementations of eLwazi use Terra (https://elwazi.terra.bio/), which accesses Google Cloud and Gen3, which uses Amazon Web Services.
The Platform Includes 3 Main Components:
Infrastructure
Terra or Gen3 implementations with workspaces and links to specific Cloud or local computing environments. Currently Terra provides access to Google Cloud Platform and Gen3 to Amazon Web Services.
Data & Data Support
eLwazi users’ datasets are hosted on various computing environments and made available through a Data Registry Service. The metadata for these datasets are searchable via an eLwazi Data Catalogue. The eLwazi Data Support WG facilitates DS-I Africa grants to share and standardise their research data.
Tools
Tools and workflows are available in different computing environments through Dockstore, and accessible via a Tool Registry Service. Workflows are executed in selected cloud environments using the GA4GH Workflow Execution Service standard.