Columbia University has arrangements with a number of cloud providers, below is a list of these with the other resources available which will help get you started in the cloud. We can assist you with guidance and recommendations that are appropriate for your specific use case. Please email us at rc@zi.columbia.edu to get started or schedule a free consultation.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest and most broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. They pioneered the modern cloud paradigm and have continued to launch new services revolutionizing the potential for leveraging on-demand resources.
Getting an AWS account
Columbia has Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with AWS, so if you are a faculty member or administrator who uses AWS for Columbia purposes, your AWS account must be requested through CUIT, which manages the creation of new Columbia AWS accounts. Please email us at rc@zi.columbia.edu for assistance getting started or you may directly request your account here: CUIT Amazon Web Services. Student and personal AWS accounts are not covered under the enterprise agreement. You will need to provide a payment Chartstring to request an account and you will be billed monthly.
Columbia AWS resources
- Direct Connect - The Columbia campus network has a 10Gb dedicated link to which connects to AWS US-East-1 enabling faster transfers as well as discounts on data egress charges.
- Training - Columbia accounts have the ability to access LinkedIn Learning courses for free which has a number of training classes for general cloud practices and AWS in particular.
- AWS specialists - Columbia has access to cloud architects and other AWS specialists as part of our relationship with Amazon. Contact us at rc@zi.columbia.edu if you'd like to connect with a specialist.
Additional AWS resources
- AWS official training has free digital workshops in addition to their classroom sessions
- The AWS Events YouTube Channel has a number of resources available from their events which provide helpful deep dives into some of their technology.
- AWS Cloud Credits for Research
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Columbia has multiple arrangements with Google, which include the Google Workplace (formerly G Suite) applications (Lionmail) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
GCP accounts can be linked to CUIT through the process listed on their CUIT's Google Cloud Platform website, which lists the advantages of linking your project to Columbia, including the ability to pay through the Columbia accounting system, and links to the Columbia UNI authentication system.
Google Cloud Platform resources
- CUIT's Research Computing Services offers training courses on using GCP for research.
- GCP also has an egress discount for Internet2 members who sign up for it.
- Google has a form where you can apply for Google Cloud research credits.
Other Google resources
Lionmail Drive comes as part of all Lionmail email accounts and Columbia's agreement allows for unlimited storage, however there are, undocumented, transfer throttling limits in place, which limit its usefulness.
Colab is a free service which offers access to Jupyter notebooks with attached GPUs, and can leverage Lionmail Drive for storage. Colab 101. Please note that GPU resources available for free on Colab are limited. To reserve additional computational resources such as faster GPUs, purchasing compute units, or access to more memory, you may need to upgrade to paid subscription or purchase compute units on-demand as shown here: https://colab.research.google.com/signup
Microsoft Azure
Columbia has a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Azure via CUIMC IT, however at this time there is no special Columbia process or documentation for setting up Azure accounts.
Columbia Azure resources
$100 in credits, no credit card required, when signing up for an Azure for Students account.
Additional cloud resources
DigitalOcean
- DigitalOcean is one of the many alternative cloud providers who offer more conventional services with fixed costs, which can sometimes be a better fit if your project. Columbia has no arrangement with DigitalOcean.
- The case for DigitalOcean from an AWS-centric blog.
Lambda Labs
| For researchers looking for cost-effective GPU resources, Lambda Cloud provides powerful on-demand GPUs at highly competitive rates compared to other major cloud providers like Azure, AWS, or GCP. While Lambda Cloud currently does not support pausing or suspending instances, they are actively working on this feature. In the meantime, Lambda Labs recommends using Docker containers and persistent storage options to save the state of the system, making it easier to resume workflows as needed. For more information, see their documentation on instance management and persistent storage. Here is a chart showing hourly pricing. |
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