This is the documentation for the Galaxy Australia implementation of Galaxy Europe's Training infrastructure as a service system (TIaaS).
Galaxy is widely used for teaching. In order to facilitate instructors, Galaxy Europe developed Training Infrastructure as a Service (TIaaS) and Galaxy Australia has implemented it. Workshop instructors can apply for TIaaS, and on the day of their workshop, their participants will be placed in a special group and use dedicated resources, thus reducing queue times on the day of the training.
TIaaS is a Django application that runs on the Galaxy Australia Web Server. It is installed and configured by an ansible role usegalaxy-eu.tiaas2
. Configuration details can be found at the Galaxy Australia infrastructure git repo: https://github.com/usegalaxy-au/infrastructure
There are a number of web URL's associated with TIaaS at Galaxy Australia. They are:
URL | Use | Who should use it |
---|---|---|
https://usegalaxy.org.au/tiaas/ | About TIaaS | Everyone |
https://usegalaxy.org.au/tiaas/new/ | Request a new TIaaS training | Instructors |
https://usegalaxy.org.au/tiaas/admin/ | Approve and Manage requests | Admin |
https://usegalaxy.org.au/tiaas/stats/ | Overall TIaaS statistics (Stats) | Admins, Funding Agencies |
https://usegalaxy.org.au/tiaas/calendar/ | Calendar of trainings (Calendar) | Admins, Funding Agencies |
https://usegalaxy.org.au/join-training/<training-id> | Join a TIaaS training | Participants |
https://usegalaxy.org.au/join-training/<training-id>/status | Dashboard with job states of trainees | Instructors |
This is a typical web form that the user has to fill in to apply for a TIaaS allocation for their workshop. The more detail entered here the better so Galaxy Australia admins can make better infrastructure allocations.
Upon submission of the form, the application will email the Galaxy Australia help system with the details.
This is a Django generated page so admins can interact with the database behind the TIaaS application. Mostly, admins will use the Trainings
sub page. This is where they can approve or reject applications.
This page shows the progress of the trainees in a particular workshop. Including where the student's jobs are at and recent job completions/errors etc.
A description of TIaaS.
A calendar showing the number of TIaaS events on any particular day
A page showing statistics of TIaaS use for Galaxy Australia
The message shown to trainee's upon their joining a particular training event
TO DO
Currently the job configuration is as follows:
- Members of training groups have jobs sent to either the Slurm training queue or the training Pulsar server depending on:
- If the tool is pulsar capable
- Size of the input file(s)
- Slurm training queue is set to a subset of worker nodes including one exclusive node with all jobs set to 2 cores only.
- Pulsar queue is set to 2 cores only.
This static configuration will limit the type of work that can be conducted in workshops. Future plans for metasheduler will alleviate this.
A prospective workshop trainer fills in the TIaaS application form - including details on:
- Dates
- Estimated number of students
- Training material to be used (GTN or otherwise)
- A short name for the course to be used in the "join" URL
- Other details of the workshop to help with admin approval process
See the form for details
Once the form is submitted, a ticket will be emailed to the Galaxy Australia helpdesk.
- The TIaaS admin receives/is assigned the event ticket in the online support pages.
- Admin logs into the TIaaS admin page
- Admin clicks on Trainings and then the name of the new workshop application.
- Admin then:
- checks the details of the training
- makes any notes of tools/workflows that will be used
- Either approves or rejects the application (consulting Service Manager).
- Emails the applicant outling the decision including:
- Join training URL for participants
- Quick explanation of the training status page
- Ask trainer to reply with feedback post workshop
- Under current system for GA -
- Make sure that training users are going to be sent to appropriate queue
- Trainer can monitor the workshop via the status page
-
The day after the conclusion of the workshop, Admin deletes the appropriate training group using
gxadmin
gxadmin mutate delete-group-role <group_name> [--commit]
- where
<group_name>
istraining-
followed by the short name used in the training URL.
This command will delete the group/role from Galaxy and remove any user associations with it to allow all users access back into the main queue.
Note: This command can only be run by a user that has write access to the database and not by a regular user who by default has read only access.
GDPR compliance:
Since this setup tracks additional personal information (submitter name & email, users in the queue view), TIaaS includes some always-on features to assist with your GDPR compliance.
- Users in public status dashboard are only visible by an anonymized identifier and colour
- Email addresses in the TIaaS admin panel will be automatically expunged 60 days after a training event
To Do:
- Customise the html templates to configure for Galaxy Australia's ecosystem
- Job configuration details
- Develop some email templates for approval/rejection of applications etc.