Option 2: Using Carina

A Second Low-Cost Option

This computing environment consists of a Stanford-managed, modern, private cloud environment, reducing usage costs for Stanford researchers. To use this platform for analytic purposes, coding skills are necessary.

Recommended for: Research teams that (1) only contain Stanford personnel/students and individuals with fully-sponsored SUNets (i.e with a Stanford email address), (2) have the necessary IRB/DRA/DUA agreement(s), and (3) whose projects won't need >1TB of storage (though more is available for purchase: see details below).

Optimal Use

R & RStudio
Python
SAS (different, notebook-like UI)
Stata (purchase of a license needed)
Is Linux-based. On-Premises.

Costs

Individual users get 25GB of data storage for free.
PI Group folders get 1TB of data storage for free (shared between members of the group & all Carina users are already part of one. If additional one(s) are needed, email srcc-support@stanford.edu.)
Additional 5TB given to Groups whose PI(s) purchase a node to add to the environment.
Option to purchase additional 10TB chunk(s) of storage space for a Group folder for ~$94.65/month--requests can be made through the SRC's SNOW form.

Benefits

Low/No Cost: Because it's managed on-premise, there are no costs for most use-cases at present.
Familiarity: This environment is similar to Nero GCP and Jupyter Notebooks.
Moderate ease of access to data: data can be exported from Redivis to Carina, though depending on the size of the data cut, approval may need to be requested through the PHS Data Portal.

Drawbacks/Other Information to Know

Not suitable for very computationally-intense methods or very large cuts of data.
May not be ideal for Stata or SAS. Both languages are supported in Carina, but the Jupyter Notebook environment may be less familiar to those accustomed to the desktop applications.
If a dataset is updated, you will have to export a cut of that update from Redivis to Carina in order for it to show up on Carina.
Downtimes for maintenance occur on the 4th Tuesday of every month. There are occasionally other downtimes.
You are responsible for ensuring that everyone with access to your Carina project is currently approved (on the PHS Data Portal) to access the data that is stored within your Carina project. Those not currently approved should be not have access to the data or the Carina Project.

Additional Carina Resources

Carina Overview: https://carinadocs.stanford.edu/

Detailed Description of Carina: https://carinadocs.stanford.edu/carina-resources

Comparison of Nero and Carina: https://carinadocs.stanford.edu/prem-vs-cloud

Carina Account Request Form: Here

Carina Demonstration: Video (Passcode: +5YHfY5D --- Just FYI, the method for exporting files from Redivis to Carina is discussed at 29min & 25sec in.)

Carina Office Hours: https://calendly.com/srcc-officehours/nero-officehours

Support Email Address: srcc-support@stanford.edu

Carina Slack Channel: #carina-users

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