Galaxy-Fox is an online virtual research environment (VRE) based on the popular Galaxy project framework. It allows users with no knowledge in high performance computing (HPC) to execute heavy computations using a very intuitive web-based interface.
Galaxy Fox provides more than 6500 tools from various research domains like bioinformatics, statistics, chemistry, climate science, materials science, astrophysics, AI, etc. These tools are deployed as containers located in a CVMFS (CernVM File System) partition which is mounted to the Galaxy-Fox server. The applications in this partition are centrally deployed, tested and maintained by Galaxy tool administrators and are identical in all Galaxy instances.
Galaxy platform supports a large number of storage solutions. Galaxy Fox users can upload files from their Fox cluster home and project directories at UiO but also from DropBox, S3 object storage locations and recently from Rucio. The platform can be easily customized for any other storage location.
The users of a Galaxy Fox can pack an entire work process including job(s) and results into single workflow files (pipelines), share them with the users in Galaxy Fox in order to be reproduced and eventually export them to other galaxy instances where they can be executed without modifications. Similarly, Galaxy platform provides simple routines for import of existing workflows from a number of workflow registries like WorkflowHub.
Galaxy platform makes use of an extremely flexible user management system allowing the administrators to organize the users in groups, assign them roles and tune up the permissions for every user, group or role. Due to this flexibility, all data in Galaxy Fox can be shared among the users thus avoiding reduplication of (huge) data.
Galaxy framework is supported by a large community of computer scientists and researchers all over the world. It provides an extensive Training Network (GTN) with interactive courses and online materials for all research domains which have adopted Galaxy platform in their daily activities.