Case Study: Caltech Guttman Lab cuts genomic sequencing from weeks to days and gains elastic HPC with Amazon Web Services

Caltech Guttman Lab - Customer Case Study

The Caltech Guttman Lab, led by Dr. Mitch Guttman, studies large noncoding RNAs and needed a high-performance computing environment that could flex between small and very large workloads. The team faced fluctuating demands—sometimes 10 nodes, sometimes 1,000 or more—without wanting the expense, space, and maintenance burden of an on‑premises cluster, and they needed a simple, centralized way to manage user credentials.

The lab moved its HPC to AWS, using an Amazon VPC with EC2-based GlusterFS storage, CfnCluster for deployment, Simple AD and Amazon WorkSpaces for centralized access, and EC2 Spot Instances for cost savings. The result: elastic scaling to 1,000+ nodes that cut genomic sequencing analysis from weeks to days, rapid storage expansions (5 TB to 24 TB in an hour), lower costs, streamlined user management, and a reusable AWS template being rolled out across the campus.

Caltech Guttman Lab

Mitch Guttman

Assistant Professor, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering