BIOTECH SOLUTIONS
Dealing with Sequencing Data
Today’s generation of life science instruments boast huge advances in technology as well as significant reduction in costs. The affordability of these new instruments is enabling more scientists to engage in new areas of research and to use these tools to explore and deliver patient personalised medicine.
Sequencers and data management
The latest sequencers generate data more quickly and in much higher volumes. A single sequencer may produce a terabyte (10¹² bytes) of data every few days. This poses both an opportunity and a challenge for scientists – and has identified new requirements for computing and storage to support the acquisition, analysis, interpretation, management and storage of data generated by these instruments.
Acquisition and Analysis
A genome sequencer will typically have an internal local storage suitable for only one or two day’s data; to keep research continuing this data must be continuously off-loaded on to a computer system capable of receiving data at a high rate, providing first pass data clean-up and then sufficient high performance storage to accept the data ready for full analysis.
High Performance Computing and Storage
Dealing with large data sets, the growth of data, its management, and the complex computational analysis of that data is a classic description of HPC (high performance computing). HP is market share leader in HPC, with powerful, industry standard, affordable and reliable solutions, and Cambridge Online has 15 years experience of supplying specialised HP based solutions to researchers working on genome sequencing. Building on that experience and an understanding of life science research requirements, HP has developed a robust HPC architecture to meet the dramatically increased requirements resulting from today’s sequencing instruments.
Affordable, Scalable Solutions
Offering a full range of advanced storage and computing solutions, HP’s HPC architecture for life sciences, built on the HP Cluster Platform can start at the workgroup or core facility to deliver high performance resources outside of the data centre.
Utilising HP c-Class BladeSystem in a compact enclosure, a small HPC system can be configured that will minimise power consumption and heat generation, as well as fitting under a lab bench. As data grows, and sequencers added, the system is scalable and expandable - suitable for labs of all sizes.
HP’s comprehensive storage portfolio provides high-bandwidth, scalable storage and resilient storage subsystem required for data management on this scale. Depending on the current and planned data volumes, the right high performance file system, together with proven HP storage hardware, can be chosen to meet the user’s needs while balancing performance against costs. There is also the option to massively scale out the storage where the largest configurations are required.
Cambridge Online Experience
Cambridge Online already has a range of customers with different needs working in the sequencing arena; from the latest adopter with an initial sequencer requiring advice on their first HPC system, through to established institutes with over 100 sequencers from different technology generations, producing multi-petabytes (1000x10¹² bytes) of data in a year, wanting to know how to extend their existing infrastructure.
Cambridge Online and HP integrated solution
Researchers contemplating the computational and storage needs for their sequencing operation will find an unbeatable combination in Cambridge Online’s expertise in design, integration and deployment of HPC solutions and network infrastructure, together with HP’s BladeSystem solutions, comprehensive storage portfolio, and specialist software
.Contact Cambridge Online to discuss the right cost-effective solution for your genome sequencing data.
