Medical researchers are using a high-performance computer (HPC) provided by OCF to understand the role of genetics in a range of common health issues, such as the development of cancer.
Researchers at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at Guy's, St Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London are hoping that the HPC system will enable them to more quickly analyse, store and archive vast quantities of data generated during their search.
Dr Rebecca Oakey, reader in epigenetics at the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics in the School of Medicine at King's College London, said: 'The sequence of the human genome has been known for 10 years now so we are using new sequencing technologies to sequence specific regions of the genome in large numbers of people in order to help understand the contributory factors to a variety of common complex disorders and developmental defects.
'These include skin diseases such as psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease and the step-by-step development of vascular disorders, psychiatric disorders, diabetes, infection and immune disease, as well as genetic components in cancer development.
'To do so, we need innovative sequencing technology to generate the data and the processing power to analyse, store and archive the data,' she added.
The two sequencing machines in use in the King's College London and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre's genomics facility collectively generate up to 50 billion base pairs of usable DNA sequence data every 10 days.
The HPC system can reduce the time necessary to analyse this data 20-fold or more, descreasing the time scales for analysis from days to hours.
The system's bespoke design, implementation, configuration, ongoing support and user training is handled by OCF.
The HPC design includes IBM's Idataplex server hardware to meet the Biomedical Research Centre's low-power-consumption and low-weight requirements.
The Idataplex incorporates ultra-low-latency 10Gb Ethernet switching modules from Blade Network Technologies.
These G8124 switches allow for high-speed, efficient and low-cost networking for the HPC environment, while being energy efficient.
Panasas plug-and-play Activestor Series 8 clustered storage using its built-in Panasas Activescale distributed parallel file system enables Biomedical Research Centre staff to have faster access to results because the HPC system can read and write data quickly from a high-performance storage system, rather than waiting for data to be extracted from a traditional, slower storage system .
The distributed parallel file system also enables current storage of up to 180 TB of raw data, an infinitely scalable storage system to meet researchers' current and future storage requirements and deployment, administration and upgrades to storage hardware.
The HPC design also includes an IBM TS3310 tape library unit with Tivoli Storage Manager to enable long-term, secure, off-site data back-up.
