[Bioclusters] Need some advice on a cluster for EST/cDNA assembly, clustering

[Dr D.S-M. Huen]

On Feb 28 2005, Matthew Hudson wrote:

> 
> Another key consideration is: How much sysadmin experience / effort does 
> this life science group have? Maintaining and updating a Linux cluster 
> built from scratch can be a challenge for a group of biology PhDs with no 
> full-time sysadmin, not to mention the cost of power consumtion, cooling 
> etc.. Sun is a little better than building your own Linux system, Apple 
> really try to make this easier and might be a better solution, but their 
> cluster software is expensive. If it's just an EST project you might 
> recommend they get one or two good size SMP machines (maybe the new quad 
> Opterons from Sun, with at least 8GB RAM) and forget about the cluster.
> 

I must admit I am considering whether I should aim to use something like 
Sun's Compute Grid service in future ($1/ CPU-hr). The overhead of sysadmin 
plus the need to find secure space for machines in a crowded lab is not one 
to be relished. Lab space is incredibly expensive too, not only to build 
and maintain but also because the space occupied by machines is space that 
could otherwise house one or more grant-generating postdocs :-)

Regards,
David Huen


Regards,
David Huen