Data

Tap into a rapidly expanding ecosystem of major biomedical datasets, bring your own data into the platform, and share data and results securely and efficiently with your collaborators.
Data Hero

Terra gives you access to a federated data ecosystem

Terra is part of an open ecosystem of data repositories hosted by various partner organizations, who work together to ensure that their data can be federated across participating platforms. This makes it possible to combine data from different repositories efficiently, economically and at any scale. In practice, this means you can find and access data from within Terra, import the relevant metadata into a workspace, and launch analyses against the data without copying or storing a single byte of it yourself.

A wide selection of data available out of the box

Terra Data Library

DataLibrary1

A rich collection of datasets made available by various organizations. Data may be public-access or restricted to researchers with appropriate credentials.
Visit the Data Library

Terra Showcase

TerraShowcase2

A selection of public workspaces contributed by our team, by partners and by community members, that contain example data and preconfigured analysis tools.
Visit the Showcase

Genomic reference
data bundles

GenomicReference bundles3

Reference genome and accessory files for Hg38 and others, preconfigured in workspaces and ready to use with tools such as the GATK Best Practices worfklows.
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Terra helps you organize your data

Most biomedical datasets are composed of some primary data files (such as genome sequence and variant calls) and varying amounts of associated metadata such as the study participants’ phenotypes, sample identifiers and so on. Terra provides a system of data tables, collectively termed “data model”, that allows you to formally describe the structure of your dataset and keep track of locations of data files in relation to the metadata. This in turn enables you to run analyses efficiently, and keeps the outputs organized so that you can progress through your research project with confidence. Datasets provided through the Data Library come with a full data model defined by the data custodian. Learn more about data models

Storing and sharing your own data

Workspace bucket

WorkspaceBucket4

Each Terra workspace is created with
its own dedicated storage bucket, where analysis outputs are written by default. You can upload data to the workspace bucket and use it for storage.
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External buckets

Externalbuckets5

You can access and run analyses on data stored in buckets managed outside of Terra; this can be either public buckets or private buckets for which you have at least read permissions.
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Sharing with collaborators

SharingWithCollabs6

When you share your workspace with a collaborator, the contents of the bucket will also be shared with them. Authorization domains can be used to limit sharing to a specific group of users.
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