About VRE
From an inventory and discussions with researchers, it has been noted that computing infrastructure plays an increasingly important role in research. Standard workstation facilities such as a desktop or notebook are not suitable or not powerful enough for complex calculations. It is necessary to scale up to equipment with higher availability and/or computing power.
The Virtual Research Environment (VRE) offers an environment with the following characteristics:
- Quick access to computing capacity (In addition, can also be removed quickly if no longer necessary);
- Not complicated (no technical knowledge necessary);
- Uses public cloud infrastructure (Microsoft Azure);
- Flexible (by simply scaling up and down the amount of CPU and Memory or by changing the hardware to GPU).
- Efficient (by adjusting the type of hardware);
- Provides opportunities for collaboration;
- You can choose different software templates: Windows and Linux environments, both with already installed software. You can install your own software to adapt it to your own requirements;
- Build your own cluster of (different) environments in a VRE workspace;
- No investment costs (pay after use), budgeting by requesting a budget limit via work order number (budget holder);
- There is a processing agreement (GDPR compliance) with Microsoft.
For a detailed explanation and options, please refer to the documentation section in the VRE-Portal.
To get a better understanding and hear the experiences of the UT researchers, you can watch this introduction video on VRE.
