Coming soon
The BioClusterStation
Life Science Research and BioInformatic filed have specific hardware and software requirements when it comes to computing. For hardware, there are three fundamentals computing resources; the processing power, large data storage and high bandwidth communications for moving efficiently data around. For software; unlike other fields where designers work in average with one or two tools, life science researchers needs access to several tools and packages and to huge databases to get their work done.
Cluster In Motion is working actively to address these specific hardware and software requirements in order to provide an affordable, user friendly and standard & open source based turn-key solution for Life Science Researchers and BioInformatic users.
The ClusterStation is architectured as a distributed system that consists of a head node or master node and a collection of of compute nodes in the same desk-side box. All the nodes are interconnected through a low latency and high speed Gigabit Ethernet Switch. The master node which acts like a high-end graphical workstation is used to manage the ClusterStation resources and provide user access and centralized storage in some configurations. The compute nodes are typically dedicated to computation or job processing and are managed by a load balancing or job scheduling software such as Sun Grid Engine or Open-PBS. For a workgroup configurations in small research labs, some compute nodes could be configured as graphical workstation/compute node that a user could be using directly.
Storage Capacity
In order to provide enough room for large databases and results that are ususally used and produced by Life Science researchers, the ClusterStation can accomodate internally up to 6 Terabytes with fast SATA Hard drives distributed across the nodes and up-to 1.6 Terabytes externally when using a Gigabit and Terabyte Network Attached Storage (NAS) such as the Buffalo TeraStation NAS. Additional TeraStations can either be connected directly to the Gigabit Switch or daisy chained, increasing therefore the external storage capabilities. The TeraStation's compact and sleek design combined with its silent operation makes it the perfect choice and the ideal companion for our ClusterStation. Together, they fit nicely in any user workspace or in any office or research lab. This flexibility of internal and external storage capabilities allows the researcher to store the data where optimum performance can be achieved.
Web Portal for Life Science Applications
To allows easy access to the multitude of open source tools and applications available in Life Science and BioInformatic field, a Bio Web portal will be provided to ease the interaction with these tools. This web portal is powered by PISE environment developed at the Pasteur Institute and will host a large collection (about 200) of Bio-Science and Molecular Biology applications.Typically the user will be using web pages to interact with the applicationa by specifying various parameters and submitting the job. The results are either available immediately or emailed later back to the user in the form of html reports. This web based environment increases drastically researcher productivty by allowing them to focus on their task rather than learning different program options and arguments.
The BioClusterStation will be delivered completely configured and cabled ready for deployment and use. All nodes are setup with Linux and network configured. A Bio web portal is created and configured to launch about 200 Life Science research applications that are pre-installed as well. Furthermore, PISE, the engine behind this web portal, will be configured to leverage the compute nodes available in the BioClusterStation through a job scheduling and load balancing software such as Open-PBS or Grid Engine.