To simplify usage of the de.NBI cloud custom images are provided. These images contain an operating system (OS) and preinstalled software/tools required for different bioinformatic applications. By launching a virtual machine (VM) based on a custom image, specific bioinformatic analyses can be performed without having to take care of installation procedures.

The bacterial genome analysis pipeline ASA³P (automatic and scalable bacterial genome assembly, annotation and analysis pipeline) can be used with a custom cloud image. For scalability reasons, a custom SUN Grid Engine (SGE) cluster is created inside the cloud allowing a scalable usage of ASA³P. For this, the software BiBiGrid (developed by the University of Bielefeld) was used. Finally, creation and termination of the cluster as well as the execution of ASA³P is automated in form of a shell script.

As an SGE cluster usually consists of a master and several slave nodes, two custom ASA³P images have been created. Both images are based on Ubuntu 14.04 and contain all software and libraries required to run ASA³P. Furthermore, the images were modified with the tool bibigrid-image for compatibility with BiBiGrid. The master and slave images were built by creating a snapshot from modified VMs.