AWS Research for Non-Majors

This workshop is designed for research IT professionals and Research Computing Directors (RCDs) who support cloud-enabled research but don’t have a deep AWS background.

Over two half-days, attendees will build a practical mental model for how AWS works — compute, storage, identity, and cost — and reinforce it through three hands-on labs. Learn the basics of what the cloud offers researchers, different data storage styles, and how identity and access management (IAM) permissions work. This workshop concludes with a deep dive into cost governance using a real-world research scenario.

This course is the first in a two-part series of research courses. We encourage you to review AWS Research Troubleshooting | Aug 5-6 and consider participating in the whole series.

Skill Level and Target Audience

• Beginner
• Researchers; Lab staff; Research computing data professionals

Workshop Objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will have a practical understanding of AWS fundamentals for research, enabling them to support researchers using cloud compute, storage, and cost management tools.

Participants will learn to:

• Understand what AWS offers for research workloads and where it fits
• Work with the three storage types (object, block, file) and know when to use each
• Launch and connect to an EC2 instance and run a research workload
• Upload and manage research data in S3
• Set up budgets and cost alerts to prevent runaway spend
• Configure cost allocation tags and analyze spending by project or grant
• Access open datasets available in AWS

Use Your CLASS Vouchers

Does your institution have voucher value available to spend on CLASS events? Please contact us to check your institution’s voucher balance or redeem your voucher for registration.