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Using Public Data Sets

Topics

This section describes how to use Amazon EC2 public data sets.

Public Data Set Concepts

Amazon EC2 provides a repository of public data sets that can be seamlessly integrated into AWS cloud-based applications. Amazon stores the data sets at no charge to the community and, like with all AWS services, you pay only for the compute and storage you use for your own applications.

Previously, large data sets such as the mapping of the Human Genome and the US Census data required hours or days to locate, download, customize, and analyze. Now, anyone can access these data sets from an Amazon EC2 instance and start computing on the data within minutes. You can also leverage the entire AWS ecosystem and easily collaborate with other AWS users. For example, you can produce or use prebuilt server images with tools and applications to analyze the data sets. By hosting this important and useful data with cost-efficient services such as Amazon EC2, AWS hopes to provide researchers across a variety of disciplines and industries with tools to enable more innovation, more quickly.

For more information, go to the Public Data Sets Page.

Available Public Data Sets

Public data sets are currently available in the following categories:

Biology—Includes Human Genome Project, GenBank, and other content.
Chemistry—Includes multiple versions of PubChem and other content.
Economics—Includes census data, labor statistics, transportation statistics, and other content.
Encyclopedic—Includes Wikipedia content from multiple sources and other content.

Finding Public Data Sets

Before you launch a public data set, you must locate it.

To find a public data set

Go to the Public Data Sets Page.
Locate a public data set and write down its snapshot ID for your operating platform (Windows or Linux/UNIX).

Launching an Instance

You'll attach a volume based on the public data set to an instance. Launch the instance as you typically launch an instance. For more information, see Launching EC2 Instances.

Creating a Public Data Set Volume

To use a public data set, you create an Amazon EBS volume, specifying the snapshot ID of the public data set.

AWS Management Console

To create an Amazon EBS volume

Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
In the navigation pane, click Volumes.
Above the upper pane, click Create Volume.
In the Create Volume dialog box, in the Volume Type drop-down list, select Standard or Provisioned IOPS. For more information, see EBS Volume Types.
In the Size box and GiB drop-down list, select the size of the volume (in GiB or TiB).
For Provisioned IOPS volumes, in the IOPS box, enter the maximum number of input/output operations per second (IOPS) that the volume can support.
In the Availability Zone drop-down list, select the availability zone in which to launch the instance. For more information, see Regions and Availability Zones
In the Snapshot drop-down list, select the ID of the snapshot from which you are launching the volume (optional)
Click Yes, Create.

Command Line Tools

To create an Amazon EBS volume

Enter the following command.

PROMPT>  ec2-create-volume --snapshot public-data-set-snapshot-id --zone availability-zone

Amazon EBS returns information about the volume similar to the following example.

VOLUME vol-4d826724 85 us-east-1a creating 2008-02-14T00:00:00+0000

To check whether the volume is ready, use the following command.
```
PROMPT>  ec2-describe-volumes vol-4d826724
```
Amazon EBS returns information about the volume similar to the following example.
```
VOLUME  vol-4d826724 85 us-east-1a  available 2008-07-29T08:49:25+0000 
```

API

To create an Amazon EBS volume

Construct the following Query request.

https://ec2.amazonaws.com/
?Action=CreateVolume
&AvailabilityZone=zone
&SnapshotId=public-data-set-snapshot-id
&AUTHPARAMS

The following is an example response.

<CreateVolumeResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2013-02-01/">
  <volumeId>vol-4d826724</volumeId>
  <size>85</size>
  <status>creating</status>
  <createTime>2008-05-07T11:51:50.000Z</createTime>
  <availabilityZone>us-east-1a</availabilityZone>
  <snapshotId>snap-59d33330</snapshotId>
</CreateVolumeResponse>

Mounting the Public Data Set Volume

Mount the public data set volume as you typically mount an EBS volume. For more information, see Making an Amazon EBS Volume Available for Use.

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