Terra on Azure cost structure (admins)

Allie Cliffe
  • Updated

If you're interested in using Terra on Azure, please email terra-enterprise@broadinstitute.org.

How your Azure tenant and subscription are related to your Terra Environment. 

Your Terra Environment and Azure Subscription

Your Terra Environment is an Azure Managed Application in your Azure subscription. The Terra-managed application is empty when you deploy it to your Azure Portal.

Your Terra Billing project acts as a passthrough between your Terra Environment and your Azure subscription. It is how you pay for cloud resources you use when working in Terra. Creating a Terra Billing project triggers the creation of your own Terra Environment. 

 

erra-on-Azure_Setting-up-Cost-Billing-structure_Diagram.png

Steps to set up billing and your Terra Environment 

  1. An organization’s IT office is set up with Microsoft Azure.
  2. The organization’s IT office creates an Azure Tenant that defines security and permissions for all of its Azure cloud resources.
  3. The organization’s IT office creates an Azure subscription that defines how Azure resources are billed.
  4. The organization’s IT office deploys a Terra Managed App from the Azure Marketplace to their Azure subscription.
  5. The organization’s IT office creates a Terra Billing Project, which creates resources that power the group’s Terra Environment.
  6. The Billing Project Owner adds users to the Billing Project. Users can now create Terra Workspaces within that Billing Project and launch analyses.
  7. The cost of the Terra Environment and all user actions in the environment are billed to the Azure subscription via the Terra Billing Project.

Terra Billing projects link Terra workspaces to your Azure subscription

All cloud costs are generated in a Terra workspace, which is assigned to a Billing project when you create it. The Terra Billing project acts as a passthrough between Terra and your Azure subscription. It is how you pay for cloud resources you use when working in Terra.

The linked Azure subscription pays all cloud costs

Terra-on-Azure_Cost-Billing-structure_Diagram.png
Each Terra Environment has an umbrella Azure subscription that
pays for all workspace costs by way of a Terra Billing Project.
Blue boxes are Azure components, and green boxes are Terra components.

Every workspace is assigned to a Terra Environment when it’s created. Thus, to create a workspace in Terra, you need access to a Terra Environment and its Terra Billing project. See Setting up billing in Terra on Azure (admins) for step-by-step instructions. Once you have a Terra Billing project, you can create or clone (copy) a workspace. All operations in the workspace will be funded by the Azure subscription via the Terra Billing project.

You do not need to be a user on a Terra Billing project to work in Terra!This is because work is paid for through the workspace Billing project. You can work in someone else's workspace if it's been shared with you (and you have the right permissions).

For example, colleagues with workspace writer permission can run workflows and interactive analyses (Galaxy, Jupyter, and RStudio). Resource costs are covered by the umbrella Azure subscription, no matter who does the work.

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