Granite
Granite is a new secure research environment that allows researchers to access and analyze sensitive data on an encrypted platform. While the following is meant to answer many frequently asked questions, please reach out to granite.support@dartmouth.edu if you have questions not covered in this article.
This tool provides a common computer platform (Linux or Windows) upon which researchers across Dartmouth Health and Dartmouth College can collaborate to view, analyze, and store sensitive data for active research projects. Beyond being a secured research environment, this platform leverages a variety of analytic packages available including SAS, Stata, R, Python, and several more. The data security configuration meets and exceeds standards typically required for research using protected health information (PHI). Planning to store and analyze your data in Granite may decrease IRB and DH Privacy review time, given the highly secured nature of the system.
After your project is IRB approved, you and your research team will request an account, and one of the DH Honest Data Brokers will connect individuals with a project and walk you through how to log on. Once your data query is completed the data broker will import the data into your project on a Virtual Machine (VM) and those listed in the IRB study team will have shared access to the data as well as the analytic tools. A Virtual Machine (VM) is a secured project-specific space that has access to various analytic packages but access is limited to the research team for this project. Users may be able to import data but the ability to export data depends on your project’s Data User Agreement (DUA).
When using PHI for research and sharing it across DH and Dartmouth College, or for a Dartmouth College-only projects, Granite is the preferred secure research platform. Studies planning to use Granite will require less review from the IRB and the DH privacy office, given the high-security standards of the platform.
A Granite virtual machine is not connected to the Internet by design. Granite does not contain all possible statistical packages though there is some possibility of gaining access to non-standard packages. This may take additional effort and time for the Granite infrastructure team to assess and develop.
Granite is designed for research projects containing PHI, particularly when data needs to be shared across DH and Dartmouth College. De-identified data may be better stored in a different tool as it does not require the same protections as PHI. In addition, if there is a DH-only research project that can be analyzed on protected DH locations, it may not need to be sent to Granite.
You can get started with Granite by filling out the Granite Project Form, a simple Qualtrics-based form that will capture critical information about your project. The team will review your project needs and reach out to you to better understand whether your project is a “fit” for Granite and discuss next steps.
If Granite is right for your project, you can begin the process by submitting a ticket to Granite Support at granite.support@dartmouth.edu. Please include your project name in the subject line.
The team will then walk you through the next steps, which include:
External collaborators must be set up with a temporary account sponsored by the project PI.
Cybersecurity training is sponsored by Dartmouth’s Information Security (InfoSec) team, and the Granite User Agreement) can be found online ( https://dartgo.org/granite-user-agreement).
To access Granite, you will need to ensure your local computer is set up with
NOTE: we currently only support Windows and Apple OS computers.
Granite is billed monthly based on resource usage. As of July 1, 2024, Granite resources cost the following:
| Resource unit costs | Per year | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | $256.59 | $21.38 |
| Memory (GB) | $128.29 | $10.69 |
| A40 GPU | $1,750.00 | $145.83 |
| Storage (TB) | $335.53 | $27.96 |
Note that 1 CPU = 1 core. For comparison, the following table shows typical costs for small, medium, and large VMs
| Example VM | CPUs | Memory (GB) | Storage (TB) | Per year | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 2 | 4 | 1 | $1,361.88 | $113.49 |
| Medium | 6 | 24 | 4 | $5,960.68 | $496.72 |
| Small | 8 | 64 | 10 | $13,618.76 | $1,134.90 |
Additional configurations are available and can be amended after initial setup; please discuss available options with Granite Support to ensure your configuration is appropriate to meet your research needs.
See the Granite Technical Overview and include its contents where appropriate in your application.
See Granite Policy for more details on the policies users following while accessing the Granite secure HPC envirionment.