[Bioclusters] servers for bio web services setup

Micha Bayer michab at dcs.gla.ac.uk
Thu Jan 13 04:48:52 EST 2005


Hi all,

I have been asked for advice on hardware by my boss, but I am slightly
out of my depth here because I really do software.

He wants to set up a bio facility which provides web/grid services
(probably Axis or GT3/4) to a substantial user community (UK-wide but
with access control, so probably in the region of hundreds or perhaps
thousands of potential users). Services will include the usual things
things like BLAST, ClustalW, protein structure analysis etc. -- probably
a small subset of what EBI offers.

The computational back end is likely to be our UK National Grid or
similar, but either way he is only providing the server that hosts the
middleware and metascheduler. He is wondering what hardware setup setup
is best for this. We are probably looking at running the web/grid
services out of Tomcat.

Would a single high-spec machine be sufficient for this kind of thing? 
Or would one have several servers doing the same thing in parallel? 
In which case, what spec should they have and how would they be
coordinated?

many thanks

Micha
-- 
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Dr Micha M Bayer
Grid Developer, BRIDGES Project
National e-Science Centre, Glasgow Hub
246c Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
Scotland, UK
Email: michab at dcs.gla.ac.uk
Project home page: http://www.brc.dcs.gla.ac.uk/projects/bridges/
Personal Homepage: http://www.brc.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~michab/
Tel.: +44 (0)141 330 2958



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