Tutorial: Elastic-R, a google docs-like portal for data analysis in the cloud

Abstract

Elastic-R is a new portal built using the Biocep-R platform. It enables statisticians, computational scientists, financial analysts, educators and students to use cloud resources seamlessly; to work with stateful R engines and use their full capabilities from within simple browsers; to collaborate, share and reuse functions, algorithms, user interfaces, R sessions, servers; and to perform elastic distributed computing with any number of virtual machines to solve heavily computational problems.

The tutorial will introduce the main concepts of the cloud. Attendees will learn how to use Amazon's cloud (EC2), how to run and use Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs) and elastic block store volumes (EBSs) and how to snapshot them. The new portal will then be introduced.

Outline

• run elastic-r AMIs and how to share them through the portal
• work with R sessions created on the AMIs from within the browser
• use the different collaborative capabilities (broadcasted consoles, interactive graphics annotators, layered graphics, files sharing...)
• use the collaborative R-enabled server-side spreadsheets from within the browser and how to mirror them to Excel spreadsheets (using the elastic-r Excel add-in)
• create user interfaces/dashboards with a drag-and-drop tool and use them to pilot R engines on the cloud
• perform parallel computing with multiple R engines running on multiple virtual machine instances using snow-like functions

Intended audience

Related links

• Biocep-R Web Site
• Article: ``Scientific Computing Environments in the age of virtualization''
• Article: ``Biocep, an e-Science Computational Platform for the Cloud''