HPC-Pipes
The course HPC-Pipes introduces best practices for setting up, running, and sharing reproducible bioinformatics pipelines and workflows. Rather than instruct on the whys and wherefores of using particular tools for a bioinformatics analysis, we will cover the general process of building a robust pipeline (regardless of data type) using workflow languages, environment/package managers, optimized HPC resources, and FAIRly managed data and tools. On course completion, participants will be able to use this knowledge to design their own custom pipelines with tools appropriate for their individual analysis needs.
The course will provide guidance on how to automate data analysis using common workflow languages such as Snakemake or Nextflow. Subsequently, we will delve into ensuring the reproducibility of pipelines and explore available options. Participants will learn how to share their data analysis and software with the research community. We will also delve into different strategies for managing the produced research data. This includes addressing the challenges posed by large volumes of data and exploring computational approaches that aid in data organization, documentation, processing, analysis, storing, sharing, and preservation. These discussions will encompass the reasons behind the increasing popularity of Docker and other containers, along with demonstrations on how to effectively utilize package and environment managers like Conda to control the software environment within a workflow. Finally, participants will learn how to manage and optimize their pipeline projects on HPC platforms, using compute resources efficiently.