SlashTCO.com: UK case study – Inpharmatica’s 1100 processor supercomputer runs on Linux

[ Thanks to Russ
Foster for this link. ]

“Inpharmatica, a UK based bioinformatics company, is currently
running Europe’s largest commercial bioinformatics supercomputer –
and it runs on Linux. Pat Leach, the IT Director at Inpharmatica,
had come from a commercial IT background and perspective. The
SlashTCO team visited Leach, and his colleague Stuart Moodie, at
Inpharmatica’s West London HQ to find out more about the company’s
high-end Linux deployment.”

“Inpharmatica was founded about 2 years ago from the origins of
an academic research group at UCL, led by Prof. Janet Thornton FRS,
CBE. The initial intent was to capitalise on the commercial value
of the expertise to be found within the research group. Since that
time it has moved from a startup to a leader in
bio-informatics.”

“Linux is used in two major areas in the company – as the
platform of choice for the supercomputer and as the desktop
operating system for the majority of the technical staff –
developers and scientists. These account for about 20 of the
50 staff.”

“However, not having Linux on the desktop companywide has not
prevented an open source strategy for the supercomputer farm. At
present there are some 600 machines in the supercomputer.
Originally this system was developed using Red Hat Linux 5, but
when the need to upgrade arrived Inpharmatica decided to switch to
the Debian distribution as the systems adminstrator felt that it
would provide greater stability and security.”

Complete
Story