The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) recently replaced all of its HP Alpha servers with Sun Microsystems' Fire servers. The institute will be using the servers to conduct complex molecular research and can achieve this with improved energy efficiency, reliability and performance thanks to the Sun Fire servers.
"Sun is committed to providing the needed infrastructure for scientific and educational institutions, such as the Institute for Genomic Research," says Helen Constantinides, storage and server practice head for Sun Microsystems South Africa. "When the institute moved off of its old, end of life technology, it chose new and innovative solutions from Sun for consolidation and migration."
The institute selected the Sun Fire x64 servers, a range of 64-bit x86 servers from Sun for customers who have different needs from what is catered for by Sun's SPARC architecture.
TIGR will be using the server infrastructure as a platform for its complex genomic assembler for molecular research. Through a combination of Sun services and innovative technologies, TIGR has created a powerful yet cost-effective high performance computing (HPC) environment. The new system provides critical reliability, reduces energy consumption by more than 70% and dramatically reduces purchasing and operating costs, allowing the Institute to complete intricate research projects and to publish results on genomic findings in the fields of energy, agriculture and others.
"This is all possible due, in part, to the use of Sun's N1 Grid Engine," explains Constantinides. "The engine allows for streamlined grid computing that best utilises computing resources and provisioning on an ongoing basis. This is vital for high performance computing, such as that being conducted by TIGR."
The N1 Grid Engine was chosen to replace TIGR's incumbent system, in meeting scalability goals. This is an intricate part of the Sun architecture being used by TIGR for its critical research.
Says Vadim Sapiro, director of IT for TIGR: "In addition to its services group that provided exceptional training and support, Sun's price for performance was compelling - we discovered that three Sun Fire x64 servers powered by AMD Opteron processors and running the 64-bit Linux operating system provided the same level of performance as our 15 HP Alpha servers previously did."
The Institute for Genomic Research is a non-profit research institute based in Rockville, Maryland, USA. TIGR, which sequenced the first complete genome of a free-living organism in 1995, has been at the forefront of the genomic revolution since the institute was founded in 1992. TIGR conducts research involving the structural, functional and comparative analysis of genomes and gene products in viruses, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes.
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