Cloud Analytics Infrastructure

Eureka Overview

Eureka is an analytic infrastructure service provided by Health Data Compass to quickly provision virtual machines on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for data scientists and developers within the Compass partnership. Eureka instances are designed for quick creation and deployment so you can get started whenever you need to. By design each Eureka instance is intended to only exist for no more than 1-year. This means if your analytic needs are dynamic and come in waves, we can create a Eureka instance to match your analytic demands. While generic virtual machines (VMs) are easy for an individual to deploy themselves directly on GCP or any public cloud provider, Eureka virtual machines are unique in the following ways:

HIPAA Compliance

Eureka instances are preconfigured to meet the HIPAA security and compliance standards of Health Data Compass and its partners (CU Denver, CU Medicine, UCHealth, and Children's Hospital Colorado). Therefore, they are pre-approved for storage and processing of protected health information (PHI) from these organizations. These standards extend far beyond typical security controls on virtual machines.

Scalability & Affordability

Eureka instances can be scaled to be just the right size for the workload at hand. Costs scale up and down accordingly, and are charged primarily based on the amount of time a system is running. If your VMs are off in the evenings or weekends, you'll only pay for storage during those times, not for compute power. See the Eureka Cost Estimator.

Various Analytic Capabilities

Eureka offers different analytic environments to meet your needs. You can get up to 3 different VMs with Eureka App VM and you can get high performance computing with Eureka HPC. Learn more about the various Eureka offerings below.

Eureka App VM

Each instance comes with a unique GCP project that includes:

  • BigQuery

  • Storage

  • App VM (sized to your order)

    • VM is CentOS 7 Linux with preinstalled applications

  • Cloud Source Repository

  • Custom URL for web-based log in to App VM and RStudio

  • Limited internet access from App VM (available 7/20/2020)

  • Nightly back ups of VM images

Preinstalled Applications on Eureka App VM

Each Eureka App VM is preinstalled with the following default suite of analytical tools and applications:

  • Ant - Java application build tool

  • Apache HTTP Server - Web server

  • Apache Maven - Build automation tool

  • Apache Tomcat - Web application platform

  • Atom Text Editor - Code editor

  • Dbeaver - Database management tool

  • Docker - Application container manager

  • Eclipse Oxygen - Software development IDE

  • GCSFuse - Utility to mount GCS buckets to local filesystem

  • GNU Make - Code compilation manager

  • GNU Octave - Statistical analysis toolkit

  • Google Cloud SDK -Utilities to access & manage Google Cloud Platform resources

  • Java - Programming language

  • Keras - Machine Learning toolkit

  • LaTeX - Document prep system for typesetting in CLI

  • LibreOffice - Office productivity suite

  • Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit - Machine Learning toolkit

  • Neo4j - Graph database service

  • Pandas - Machine Learning toolkit

  • pgAdmin3 - Administrative tool for PostgreSQL

  • PostgreSQL - Database server

  • PyCharm - Python IDE

  • R - Statistical analysis toolkit

  • R Studio - Desktop-based IDE for R

  • R Studio Server - Browser-based IDE for R

  • SAS 9.4* - Statistical analysis software**

  • Standard Linux Dev Tools - Default packages installed from yum groupinstall "development tools"

  • TensorFlow - Machine Learning toolkit

  • Texmaker - LaTeX editor with a user interface

  • Valgrind - Debugging/memory management tool

  • Visual Studio Code - Code editor

*Installed only at User request**Requires Users to have their own software license

Eureka HPC

Each instance comes with a unique GCP project that includes:

  • Storage

  • BigQuery

  • HPC VM

    • VM is CentOS 7 Linux with SLURM Control for batch job execution

    • Ephemeral VMs spun up based on job needs

  • Custom URL for web-based log in to HPC VM

  • Limited internet access from HPC VM

  • Attached Managed Network File Storage

Eureka Data Access

Eureka accommodates users who have their own datasets (PHI or de-identified) by providing secure, HIPAA-compliant upload mechanisms. Users can also request data from Compass and have it delivered as a dataset that is accessible from your Google BigQuery project in Eureka. Lastly, users have access to the latest publicly available datasets Google has provided on Google BigQuery. These datasets include Medicare, genomics, weather data, and more. (See the latest list here.)​

Eureka Billing

Users pay for their actual Eureka costs and Compass support services on a quarterly basis. Payment is set up at the time of creation for each of your Eureka instances. Changes to your payment method can be made by contacting Compass directly here.

You can track your Eureka usage on the Google Billing Console (from within your Eureka instance) or you can request an update on your usage from Compass here.

Getting Started

The process for getting your Eureka Platform instance created is simple and straight forward.

  1. Sign the Eureka User Agreement & Terms & Conditions of Service (EUATCS). Read the short agreement before signing, there are important details about Eureka that are very relevant to you before you start.

  2. You will need to specify your Eureka App VM instance (CPUs, RAM, storage, and number of VMs needed) using the Eureka Price Estimator. Send a screen shot of your final configurations to your Compass Representative who will then get your Eureka project created. If you require an application listed above with an (*), send that request in the same email. Also send along the University SpeedType number that your Eureka charges should be billed to.

  3. After Compass receives your completed and signed EUATCS we will create your Compass Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account, if you don't already have one.

  4. Once your Eureka App VM instance has been created, you will get a confirmation email along with further instructions for accessing and using your Eureka!

If you get stuck or lost along the way, reach out to Compass for assistance here.

No longer needing your Eureka instance?

When you are done with your Eureka instance, we can decommission your instance (email us here). Decommissioning a Eureka instance means deleting the Eureka App VM, Eureka BigQuery and Cloud Storage project, Eureka Cloud Source Repository, and backup images. Once a Eureka instance is decommissioned there is no way to retrieve it.

Before you give Compass permission to decommission your Eureka instance make sure all data you want to keep is copied in another HIPAA compliant and secure location. This includes any data on your Eureka App VM, Eureka BigQuery & Cloud Storage project, and any code in your Eureka Cloud Source Repository.