Hello Bioconductor community,

I am learning how to a Bioconductor AMI using the steps in the link https://www.bioconductor.org/help/bioconductor-cloud-ami/ under “Launching the AMI”.  I set up an Amazon Web Services account and launched an AMI using the recommended ID (ami-64d43409).  However, I am encountering a problem in trying to configure the AMI to use the free tier.  

Here are the details of the steps I followed to launch the AMI: From the AWS console, I first click "launch instance".  Then I click the "Community AMI" tab and paste in the AMI ID ami-64d43409 recommended on the Bioconductor AMI help site.  After clicking 'Select' on the pre-configured Bioconductor AMI, I accept the defaults for instance type (t2.micro, free tier) by clicking "Review and Launch".  However, I get a warning message pop up that says: "Your instance configuration is not eligible for the free usage tier".  I think this may be due to the fact that the storage is preconfigured for 100GB and the free tier is only eligible for 30GB.  When I try to change the storage amount by clicking "Edit Storage" on the "Review and Launch" page (and enter the maximum free tier amount of 30GB), I get the following error message after clicking "launch": "Launch Failed: Volume of size 30GB is smaller than snapshot 'snap-521fc0a9', expect size >= 100GB." 

I am able to get the AMI up and running if I leave the storage at the default 100GB, but this will incur charges since it is not compatible with the free tier restrictions.  Is there a way to modify the preconfigured AMIs with a smaller storage so that the free tier can be utilized?

In addition, once the AMI is running, I would like to launch RStudio Server in a browser.  The Bioconductor AMI help site says this is possible, but I'm not sure where to find the username and password login info from my running instance details or how to login with those credentials.  

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best,

Keegan Korthauer

Hi Keegan,

We pre-loaded the AMIs with a large number of Bioconductor software and annotation packages thinking this would be a convenience, i.e., users avoid spending time downloading packages themselves. Having a minimal configuration with a handful of Bioconductor packages that meets the free tier criteria sounds like a good idea and would be useful for those testing the waters. We'll look into adding a minimal AMI, it may be a week or so before this gets done.

Lori is looking into the RStudio credentials. We could send them to you off-line but would rather post them to the web site if this doesn't compromise security. Once we've sorted that out we'll let you know how to get the credentials.

Thanks for raising these issues.

Valerie

Please see the updated documentation:

http://www.bioconductor.org/help/bioconductor-cloud-ami/#connecting_rstudio