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Difference between revisions of "User:Dag"

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Thoughs on the OSC offer:
 
Thoughs on the OSC offer:
<code>
 
Terry Lewis and I spoke with you recently about the interest of the Ohio
 
Bioinformatics Consortium (OBC) and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) in
 
hosting the OBF open source bioinformatics software.
 
  
After consultation with Ashok Krishnamurthy, Research Director of the OSC,
+
My thoughts in no particular order:
we hereby state our interest in serving as a host.  OSC would like to offer
 
its hardware resources and the expertise of its cyber-infrastructure team.
 
Additionally, as Coordinators of the OBC, Terry Lewis and I would like to
 
offer the assistance of Ohio's bioinformatics community.  In particular, the
 
Research and Infrastructure Working Group of the OBC is interested
 
supporting, utilizing and enhancing the OBF bioinformatics software. This
 
represents a great opportunity for synergy among the OBC and the OBF.
 
  
We have resources and manpower that we can dedicate to this initiative.
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* OBF infrastructure is generally solid, we have adequate server and bandwidth resources
However, before we can make a more detailed commitment, we need additional
+
 
information from the OBF about the requirements, needs and goals regarding
+
* Should new servers/hosting be offered (ideally running off of a virtualization hypervisor) we should consider the following:
the OBF open source bioinformatics softwareThus, we request the
+
** A backup/replicated storage target system for offsite backups
opportunity to discuss this issue with you and the OBF Board during the
+
** Dedicated machines (32bit Linux, 64bit linux, Mac OSX) for automated OBF software builds and unit testing
conference call of Nov. 19, 2008.
+
** An external Nagios server on a different network that can monitor our systems and network services
</code>
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** Mirror FTP and anonymous CVS/SVN/GIT repositories
 +
 
 +
* Other resources worth talking about
 +
** OBF site search has generally been sub-par, we use external google custom searches currently; google search appliance?
 +
** My biggest infrastructure problem is email & SMTP hygiene. Simply put the open source mail cleaning and anti-spam technologies that we use (spamassassin, MIMEdefang, clamAV, greylisting) can not keep up with modern spam and malware distribution methods. The OFB email and discussion lists are our biggest and most active resources but the spam problem has forced us to close off lists and use mandatory moderation on all messages (a large human burden for our mail admins). Ideally we would outsource our SMTP stream for some upstream cleaning/scanning of incoming traffic but these companies typically charge by the domain name or individual email address (of which the OBF has many) so this becomes a cost problem. For my own business I outsource my SMTP stream to MailFoundry.com and have been very happy with how they screen out the "next-gen" malware and spam. I would *love* for the OBF to purchase and operate a dedicated email hygiene appliance such as the ones sold by MailFoundry here: http://mailfoundry.com/ -- owning our own appliance removes all per-address and per-domain limits.
 +
 
 +
* Our internal IT/sysadmin staff needs to be strengthened, additional sysadmin resources would be welcome, especially people who can help with:
 +
** Multi-site MediaWiki integration and optimization
 +
** CVS to SVN and/or GIT migration

Revision as of 16:26, 19 November 2008

See Chris's BioPerl page

Thoughs on the OSC offer:

My thoughts in no particular order:

  • OBF infrastructure is generally solid, we have adequate server and bandwidth resources
  • Should new servers/hosting be offered (ideally running off of a virtualization hypervisor) we should consider the following:
    • A backup/replicated storage target system for offsite backups
    • Dedicated machines (32bit Linux, 64bit linux, Mac OSX) for automated OBF software builds and unit testing
    • An external Nagios server on a different network that can monitor our systems and network services
    • Mirror FTP and anonymous CVS/SVN/GIT repositories
  • Other resources worth talking about
    • OBF site search has generally been sub-par, we use external google custom searches currently; google search appliance?
    • My biggest infrastructure problem is email & SMTP hygiene. Simply put the open source mail cleaning and anti-spam technologies that we use (spamassassin, MIMEdefang, clamAV, greylisting) can not keep up with modern spam and malware distribution methods. The OFB email and discussion lists are our biggest and most active resources but the spam problem has forced us to close off lists and use mandatory moderation on all messages (a large human burden for our mail admins). Ideally we would outsource our SMTP stream for some upstream cleaning/scanning of incoming traffic but these companies typically charge by the domain name or individual email address (of which the OBF has many) so this becomes a cost problem. For my own business I outsource my SMTP stream to MailFoundry.com and have been very happy with how they screen out the "next-gen" malware and spam. I would *love* for the OBF to purchase and operate a dedicated email hygiene appliance such as the ones sold by MailFoundry here: http://mailfoundry.com/ -- owning our own appliance removes all per-address and per-domain limits.
  • Our internal IT/sysadmin staff needs to be strengthened, additional sysadmin resources would be welcome, especially people who can help with:
    • Multi-site MediaWiki integration and optimization
    • CVS to SVN and/or GIT migration