AUMC General Information about myDRE

AUMC General Information about myDRE

1. Introduction

This article serves as a summary of general information surrounding myDRE, specifically for Amsterdam UMC users. While not all the information in this article is AUMC specific, please be aware that certain parts only apply for users of AUMC workspaces.

2. Requesting user accounts

User accounts can be requested through a ticket. For this, click on "My Tickets" and log in with your support.mydre.org user account. If you don't have an account yet, you can sign up through the same menu as well.



After logging in, click on 'Add Ticket' next to the search bar. A list of departments will should show up. Click on 'Submit Ticket' under the Amsterdam UMC department.



Next you will see a number of ticket submission options, including a 'New accounts (aumc)' option. Use this ticket option for requesting one or multiple user accounts.
Please be aware, that we generally don't accept non-institutional-mail addresses (e.g. gmail, hotmail or similar) for the creation of user accounts. Exceptions can be made if no institutional e-mail is available. In that case the accountable of the workspace, that the new user will be working in, is responsible for performing an ID check that the e-mail address does indeed belong to the right person.

3. Requesting workspaces

Same as requesting new user accounts, a new workspace can be requested through a ticket. You can use the 'Request a workspace (aumc)' ticket option in the same menu as described above. Please note that in most cases a privacy impact assessment needs to be done before we can provision you with a workspace. Usually this is done during an initial intake where we discuss your requirements and assess if a myDRE is indeed the best option. However, if your research group already has one or multiple workspaces and simply requires another workspace for handling the same or similar data in a separate environment, another privacy impact assessment is not necessary. If that is the case, please let us know in the description of your workspace request.

For the creation of a workspace, we need at minimum the following information:
  1. What is the name of the research project?
  2. Will you (the requestor) also be the accountable of the workspace?
  3. If not, who will be the accountable?
  4. What should the workspace title be? 
  5. What should the workspace acronym be (letters and numbers only, maximum 6 letters)?
  6. What is the associated cost center?
You can also provide a list of colleagues who will be working in the workspace but don't have a myDRE account yet. We will then also create those accounts (including the user account for the accountable, if necessary. Naturally, the policy for non-institutional e-mail addresses mentioned above also applies here.
During the creation of the workspace we can also already assign one member as a privileged member. This is optional, but might be useful if the accountable user does not play an active role in managing the workspace. In that case, consider naming a person who should be assigned the role of privileged member in the Description field.

3.1 myDRE cost estimator

If you already have a workspace or you are about to request a workspace and you are still wondering how much a certain setup will cost you, you can use the myDRE cost estimator, which can be found here: Workspace costs (mydre.org)
Be aware that these costs are always an estimation and there is no guarantee that this estimate will be 100% correct. Costs can incur with data-flow within a workspace as well, and this data-flow is difficult to predict. There is a more detailed explanation of the costs associated with data-flow in the article above.

3.2 Amsterdam UMC Fair-Use policy

For any workspaces within the Amsterdam UMC subscriptions, a Fair-Use policy is in place. This Fair-Use policy effectively covers 0,5 TB storage and the use of a standard B2ms machine for a regular amount of working hours (8 hours per day, 5 days a week) each month. This amounts to approximately € 50,- excluding VAT per month. Any incurred workspace costs below that threshold will not be billed to the cost center and will be covered by the Amsterdam UMC instead. This will be calculated every six months for which an average of those past six months will be used.
If the accumulated average costs over those 6 months exceeded the monthly threshold of the Fair-Use policy, an invoice of the total amount minus the Fair-Use amount will be sent to the given cost center.

4. Getting started with myDRE

If you are new to myDRE and need some information on how to get started, there are two recommended sources, the myDRE e-learning module and Knowledge Base.

The e-learning module provides step by step explanations from the very basics to how to manage your workspace through text, illustrations and video. We highly recommend all users to go through this module. It does explain features which are not accessible to only privileged members or accountables of a workspace, however this can also help any standard member understand the possibilities within the platform, even though they might not be able to make direct use of all of them themselves.

The knowledge base contains a lot of general information as well, in fact a lot of articles are referenced at the end of the e-learning module. These articles have been written and are maintained by anDREa and all the local support team members. So in case you find any information to be outdated, please let us know through a ticket so we can update the information.

The articles explaining the most important features and aspects of myDRE are organized into sections, which you can find here:
  1. myDRE | Getting Started Knowledge Base
  2. myDRE | Virtual Machines Knowledge Base
  3. myDRE | Storage Knowledge Base
  4. myDRE | Costs Knowledge Base
  5. myDRE | Workspace Management Knowledge Base
There are also plenty of articles detailing on how to set up certain software to work correctly with myDRE, for example how to set up your workspace and virtual machine in a way so you can download and install Python or R packages. Please make use of these articles as much as possible before creating a ticket. Of course, if anything is still unclear or there are no articles yet which help with your question, always feel free to start a conversation with us.

5. AUMC specific recommendations

When it comes to choosing a VM template and type to start off with, we recommend using a B2ms virtual machine type and the Windows-AUMC-CV2 template.

B2ms machine are relatively cheap general purpose machines. These are "Burst" machines, which means that their performance can sometimes vary, so do not use them for any tasks which require full continuous CPU performance. A list and explanation of the various virtual machine types can be found here: Virtual Machine Types (mydre.org)

The Windows-AUMC-CV2 template is, like the name suggests, a Windows machine. It comes with a pre-installed software store, but little else. You can use this software store to install simple software like Google Chrome, Visual Studio Code, but also Anaconda, R/RStudio, SPSS, etc. The contents of this software store are managed by us as the AUMC local support members. If you are missing in any software in the store, please feel free to contact us through a ticket. We can then investigate if adding your desired software to the store is feasible and could be of value to other users. Instructions on how to use Chocolatey and which software is currently available through it can be found here: AUMC - Instructions for the use of Chocolatey (mydre.org)

Of course, if you need a Linux machine, or you already know that you will need a different virtual machine type for some more computing intensive tasks, these recommendations might not fully apply to you. But keep in mind, that VMs can always be rescaled. A very good trick to save costs if you are planning to use a very costly VM, is first deploying the VM with a cheaper VM type, setting up all the software and tools you need, and then resize the VM to a size which would fulfill your computing needs.

6. Submitting tickets for technical assistance

If after going through this article and the other sources provided you still have any questions, or if you need assistance with a technical problem, please feel free to submit a ticket.
Remember that when asking for help with a certain problem, the easiest way to speed up the process and help us solve your problem as quickly as possible, is to provide us with all the essential information right from the get-go. What information we need always depends a bit on the question, but in general, it is always a good idea to provide us with the following:
  1. What workspace are you working in (please provide the Azure identifier, starting with "dws-..."
  2. If the problem affects a certain VM, what is the name of the VM?
  3. Describe the problem in detail, screenshots often help as well
  4. When did you encounter the problem?
  5. Did whatever is not working now work before? If so, has anything changed on your side (different browser, environment, new software installed, etc)?
  6. In certain cases: Are other users of the workspace experiencing the same problem?
Any other information which you think might be important is of course also always welcome.

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