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Inside DNAnexus

Product updates, industry insights, opinions and references. From the team powering the Genomics Revolution.

Addressing the Complex Storage and Archival Needs of DNA Sequencing Data

DNA Data Archive

Computational biologist and large-scale computational DNA expert, Eric Schatz, estimates that by the year 2025 we will amass between 100 million and 2 billion sequenced human genomes.1 That’s a massive amount of data to use for the purpose of improving human health, but there’s a bit of a catch: we need to find creative solutions for storing these data. These solutions must be economical and must promote rapid retrieval of data when needed for analyses.

Typically, cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, use a tiered pricing structure. Data needed frequently command a higher storage fee than those needed infrequently and placed in cloud archives, or cold storage.

At DNAnexus, we are committed to supporting the sequencing community with creative solutions, which is why we are proud to announce the upcoming rollout of our new archival service.

The DNAnexus archival service provides a cost-effective and secure way to store files that do not need to be accessed frequently. More importantly, even though the files may be moved to cold-storage, the DNAnexus Platform continuously maintains the data provenance and keeps the meta-information of those files, such as tags and property key-value pairs, searchable. With the DNAnexus archival service, you can locate the files–whether they are archived or live–simply by querying their meta-information. 

With this feature, you can archive individual files, folders, or entire projects. You can also easily unarchive one or more files, folders, or projects when they need to make the data available for further analyses.

Currently, the DNAnexus Archival Service is available via the application program interface (API) in AWS regions only, and you must have a license.

  • To learn more about archiving and unarchiving, click here.
  • To request a license to use this feature, contact sales@dnanexus.com

1. Fleishman G. The Data Storage Demands of Genome Sequencing Will Be Enormous. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542806/how-do-genome-sequencing-centers-store-such-huge-amounts-of-data/. Published October 26, 2015. Accessed October 3, 2019.

About DNAnexus

DNAnexus the leader in biomedical informatics and data management, has created the global network for genomics and other biomedical data, operating in 33 countries including North America, Europe, China, Australia, South America, and Africa. The secure, scalable, and collaborative DNAnexus Platform helps thousands of researchers across a spectrum of industries — biopharmaceutical, bioagricultural, sequencing services, clinical diagnostics, government, and research consortia — accelerate their genomics programs.

The DNAnexus team is made up of experts in computational biology and cloud computing who work with organizations to tackle some of the most exciting opportunities in human health, making it easier—and in many cases feasible—to work with genomic data. With DNAnexus, organizations can stay a step ahead in leveraging genomics to achieve their goals. The future of human health is in genomics. DNAnexus brings it all together.