Resources & FAQ

Q: What does Service Workbench on AWS do?

A: Service Workbench on AWS is a web frontend that simplifies the process of standing up compute instances and collaboration on central data for users that need to have simple access to these technologies without having to stand these up through AWS Console. It is an abstraction layer on top of standard AWS services that automates many steps required for these tasks by involving AWS CloudFormation templates. This saves research users time to stand up these environments and allows central administrators to build templates that are secure to prevent the risk of data breaches.

Q: Does the solution provide sample template for compute instances?

A: Out of the box, the solution installs four templates for compute instances, based on AWS CloudFormation templates. These default templates allow to stand up compute instances for: 1) EC2 with Linux operating system; 2) EC2 with Windows operating system; 3) SageMaker with Jupyter Notebook; 4) Hail on EMR  

Q: What data stores are currently supported?

A: Service Workbench on AWS currently stores data in Amazon S3 in a bucket it manages. In the future, the system will support the ability to use S3 buckets that are owned and managed by other accounts as well in order to simplify the use of research data in already existing S3 buckets.

Q: Can I share my templates with others?

A: Service Workbench allows collaboration by providing permission-based access. Users with the applicable permissions can create environments with the templates and data you choose to share.

Q: What obstacles does Service Workbench help overcome?

A: Customers can accelerate research while promoting repeatability, multi-site collaboration, and cost transparency in the research process:

• Most researchers are not familiar with deploying complex cloud infrastructure, so they lose critical time to science.
• Most research operates on fixed-cost awards requiring cost transparency and spend control.
• Major burden on research IT to offer repeatable, reproductible, and collaborative research environments across research centers and universities.

Q: What are the options for deploying Service Workbench at my organization?

A: As on open source solution, research IT may freely download, use, and customize Service Workbench for their needs. Alternatively, your organization can leverage the AWS Professional Services team to assist in your production deployment or use one of the many partners in our AWS Partner Network to assist and even manage your Service Workbench environment for you.

Q: Can a partner help me deploy?

A: Delivery and Managed Services Partners are AWS Partner Network (APN) Consulting Partners who help create and manage catalogs of research IT environments that the customer's organization approves for use on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With AWS Service Catalog on Service Workbench, customers and partners can centrally manage commonly deployed research IT services to help achieve consistent governance and meet compliance requirements while enabling users to self-provision approved services. These APN Partners have developed offerings to help you adopt and implement Service Workbench on AWS at scale.