[Bioclusters] Designing a life sciences computing facility

[Adam MacDonald]

I would first find out from your faculty or stakeholders what kind of
design they need.  Do they need a 24x7 datacenter or a lab
environment that's does not have performance specific metrics or critical
processes running?  If performance and availability are key you will need
NOC monitoring, redundant power, water, etc. and in that case be sure to
hire an independent engineering consulting firm to
prepare the physical design once you're sure of the hardware
requirements.  Get a company that has
experience building raised floors, installing Inergen fire suppression
systems etc., because these are capital intensive decisions that your
facilities managers will need to know about (if only for safety
regulations).

I was involved in building one of these and in my experience it's best to
get the business owners (as it were) to detail their requirements and then
spend the money to hire experienced professional for your design.  In the
end, we've used an Exodus facility (cheaper and more reliable, but not
realistic for academic research).


Adam MacDonald
President and CEO
Invio Bioinformatics Inc.
SN: AdamCMacDonald
V: (902) 420-1437
F: (902) 422-2388
www.invio.ca


On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, James Cuff wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, chris dagdigian wrote:
>
> > I started to reply but Joe hit it on the head exactly :) The key is to
> > overbuild the physical facility, network core and storage/backup
> > infrastructure. The compute systems can be aquired and scaled far more
> > easily than the foundation stuff.
>
> Joe speaks the truth.  We've so much been through the room that don't
> scale and systems that will...
>
> J.
>
>

-- 

Adam MacDonald
President and CEO
Invio Bioinformatics Inc.
SN: AdamCMacDonald
V: (902) 420-1437
F: (902) 422-2388
www.invio.ca