I should've described our needs a little better in my original post, so
here goes:
We have several hundred users on our current box but I'd guess that for
the most part, less than 10 simultaneously, and mostly nothing too
processor intensive like, say, pine ;).
However, we conduct workshops on GCG and at those times, we have up to 20
simultaneous users, sometimes running under seqlab, and the system can bog
down. This bog down is why we are concerned and looking into upgrading.
Also, we're also hoping that as people attend these workshops and learn
GCG, we'll have more usage. Therefore, something somewhat scalable (pop in
a few more processors?) would definitely interest us.
There is also the matter of certain programs that take a long time
currently, such as fasta, or even worse, the database management programs
(srsupdates take more than 18 hours, maybe significantly more) and though
these are run every day, it would be nice if they were quicker. I know
that disk speed is a big factor here, but I'm sure a faster CPU wouldn't
hurt.
I should also mention that our current server is also our web server and
does a number of other things not related to GCG, and while we're
investigating offloading those services to a separate machine, it'd be
nice if we could get a server that could handle all that without breaking
a sweat.
So that's our story. Thanks again for your help.
-Harry
--
Harry Hahn <h3 at ucla.edu>
Research and Instructional Biocomputing Services - UCLA
