Setting up a VNC server on AWS EC2

Wikipedia provides a useful definition of Virtual Network Computing (VNC): Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse input from one computer to another, relaying the graphical-screen updates, over a network. What this means is…

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TIL that you can download SRA data from AWS

The Sequence Read Archive (SRA) is the largest publicly available repository of high throughput sequencing data. (Fun fact: it used to be called the Short Read Archive since most of the data was from short read sequencers.) The tool fastq-dump from the SRA Toolkit can be used to download SRA data. A while ago I…

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Running RStudio Server on Amazon EC2

I recently purchased an ASUS Chromebook as I wanted an affordable and portable (lightweight and decent battery life) laptop. The Chromebook can run Linux (Debian by default) using ChromeOS’s Linux development environment, so it essentially has everything I need for work. RStudio is an essential tool for my work and I could install and use…

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Amazon Elastic Block Store storage

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a block-level storage that many EC2 instances use as storage (as the only option). Therefore if you plan to use EC2 instances, you should learn more about EBS or you’ll find out the hard (pricey) way that you can still get charged even with a stopped instance. EBS volumes…

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Uploading to Amazon S3 using AWS CLI

Amazon S3 is an affordable resource for storing your data; you pay for what you use. There are four cost components to consider: 1. Storage pricing (how much space you use) 2. Request and data retrieval pricing (number of requests you make) 3. Data transfer and transfer acceleration pricing (how often you transfer the data)…

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