Dear Radboudumc DRE user,

We have yet another DRE newsletter for you, with the following topics:

• Summary of the DRE Community meeting (28 September 2023)
• Availability of virtual machine types
• Workspace archiving and removal

Happy reading!

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Summary of the DRE Community meeting

On September 28, Radboudumc, Erasmus MC and UMC Utrecht organized the first joint DRE Community meeting. The meeting was held in hybrid form, with physical locations at each site and the possibility to join via Teams. Most attendees chose the latter option: out of the 119 people who initially signed up, 94 indicated that they would join via Teams. Despite a few technical hiccups, it was an interesting and fruitful meeting. The recording is in the hands of Erasmus MC, who hosted the Teams session, and will be shared at a later moment. The slides presented by anDREa and the results of the Mentimeter survey have been shared with all Accountable and Privileged members of Radboudumc workspaces.

anDREa roadmap

Two new self-service features are currently being developed: user creation and domain allowlisting:

• The user creation feature will allow Accountable and Privileged members to request the creation of new user accounts directly through the myDRE portal, meaning that it will no longer be necessary to submit tickets for this through the separate support website. Note that the actual account creation still needs to be approved by your local support person, it will not be instantaneous.

• Domain allowlisting is currently already available as non-self-service, and will in time replace the current IP allowlisting method that can be found under the External Access tab of your workspace. Making this a self-service feature has always been a condition for Radboudumc to adopt the method as the standard for external access. For more information about the two methods, see External access in your workspace.

The following features were also presented by anDREa to be under development or planned for the future:

• Periodic access reviews: Accountable/Privileged members will be asked to periodically check and confirm that the Members list of their workspace is still correct, i.e. that there is no unauthorized access. This check is required to maintain anDREa’s ISO27001 certification.
• Improved virtual machine template management: The templates overview in the VM creation menu will show only templates available for your organization (i.e., organization-specific and general anDREa templates).
• Improved file upload, transfer and download
• Easier access to Bastion connection

Survey results

All four main organisations that use the DRE (Radboudumc, Erasmus MC, UMC Utrecht and Amsterdam UMC) were roughly equally represented. Together they scored the DRE a 6.6. The platform is associated with collaboration, and is described as safe/secure, useful and promising, but also as slow and clumsy. The DRE is mostly used for data storage, processing/analysis, and collaboration, but is also used for workshops and hackathons, machine learning, and data sharing. The main issues concerning file upload, transfer, download and management are speed and reliability. Finally, anDREa received several very useful tips for improvement of the platform, which they will review and incorporate in their roadmap. Thanks to everyone who provided input!

Availability of virtual machine types

In the DRE, only a small selection of virtual machine types is available by default. The idea behind this is that users are not confronted with a set of hundreds of machine types to choose from. The base selection the DRE offers is based on the expected needs of most users, and can always be expanded for workspaces that require specific equipment. The available types are regulated through policies on the subscription level (a ‘container’ that holds resources for up to 100 workspaces) and on the resource group level (the workspace itself).

Over time, the number of subscriptions needed to house our workspaces grew, and the policies started to vary between subscriptions and between workspaces. Radboudumc local DRE support recently started to clean up these policies and has determined a new base set based on the current use. This base set has now been implemented for all subscriptions and workspaces, while keeping existing requested exceptions in place. Please let us know if you are missing an essential option in your workspace. 

The new base set is:

For more information about virtual machine types, you can have a look at the descriptions provided by Microsoft Azure, or see our own summary.

Workspace archiving and removal

The anDREa development team recently gave a demo to the local support members for a new workspace archiving feature. This feature will let you archive all files present on your workspace’s data drive to a special Radboudumc subscription, and then deletes the workspace itself. If necessary, the archived data can be restored through a special workspace creation procedure. However, virtual machines and custom templates cannot be retained, and will be lost when a workspace is archived. Radboudumc also offers internal archiving options, such as a department drive or bulk storage. When you have finished your work in the DRE and no longer need the infrastructure, we recommend to archive your data via one of the available options and to have your workspace permanently deleted.

Please be reminded that Radboudumc research data management (RDM) policy, as well as most funders, require the public sharing of research data (‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’). Publishing your (meta)data through a data repository such as DANS Data Stations is the recommended route. Any data that cannot be published but needs to be retained should be archived, for example using one of the options mentioned above.