After moving to AWS and DNAnexus, Baylor completed its first analysis in 10 days—five times faster than with the local infrastructure—and was able to share the findings quickly. The analysis took 21,000 cores; one Amazon EC2 XL instance has 16 virtual cores. “The AWS Cloud enables swift collaboration even with hundreds of terabytes of data,” Veeraraghavan says. “The ability to have a central area for people to process that data cuts down on bandwidth and the need to buy and maintain vast computational resources.”

It’s a far cry from the days when Baylor had to ship out hard drives to help scientists collaborate. By using AWS and DNAnexus, Baylor and CHARGE were able to provide scientists using different systems with a common environment for sharing analysis tools. “Any scientist, whether he’s running on a Mac, Linux, or Windows, can run any tool on all the CHARGE data in DNAnexus,” Veeraraghavan says. Andrew Carroll, lead DNAnexus Scientist for CHARGE, adds, “Using the AWS Cloud makes it possible to compare tools, so that you can understand what works for your project and what doesn’t. DNAnexus on the AWS Cloud lets researchers share what they learn with the scientific community.”

The scalability of the AWS Cloud helps CHARGE scientists gain more predictive power over the conditions they are studying. They can also identify “protective” genes that may help shield a person from developing a condition—and they can do so quickly and securely. “This is the definition of why you want to go to the AWS Cloud,” Carroll says. “CHARGE needs to run at very high peak loads for as short a period of time as possible to get the job done. Using the AWS Cloud allows DNAnexus the flexibility to build its own PaaS on top of AWS technology. We can scale the DNAnexus system to practically unlimited compute and data storage resources.”

Above all, using DNAnexus and AWS has enabled CHARGE scientists to focus on science—not infrastructure. “Upgrading your infrastructure for every big influx you see coming requires substantial investment, not to mention space,” Veeraraghavan says. “These kinds of compute are not a one-time thing, either: they keep growing exponentially. There are all kinds of limitations in our ability to find the horizons of science. But now, thanks to AWS and DNAnexus, we can focus on the science instead of the infrastructure.”