Distributed tools deployment and management for multiple galaxy instances in globus genomics.

Workflow systems play an important role in the analysis of the fast-growing genomics data produced by low-cost next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. Many biomedical research groups lack the expertise to assemble and run the sophisticated computational pipelines required for high-throughput analysis of such data. There is an urgent need for services that can allow researchers to run their analytical workflows where they can define their own research methodologies by selecting the tools of their interest. We present the challenges associated with managing multiple Galaxy instances on the cloud for various research groups using Globus Genomics, a cloud based platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that provides the Galaxy workflow system as a hosted service along with data management capabilities using Globus Online. We address the unique challenges, our strategy, and a tool for automatically deploying and managing hundreds of analytical tools coming from the public Galaxy Tool Shed, new tools wrapped by our group, and tools wrapped by end users across multiple Galaxy instances hosted with Globus Genomics.