INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BioSS staff, students and visitors enjoy a high-quality local computing environment with central multi-core servers, augmented by access to multi-processor clusters for compute-intensive tasks. Access to BioSS facilities in Edinburgh is provided by a Secure Portal environment.
BioSS has a high-quality, resilient IT infrastructure in Edinburgh based on Linux workstations as central servers. All users have either a managed PC or Linux workstation. We also have access to clusters at Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, SCRI and, more recently, Eddie, the Edinburgh Computer Data facility (ECDF) cluster.
- The SCRI computing cluster.
Computing support for BioSS is provided by a small group of staff, augmented as appropriate by a contractual arrangement with EUCS and by hiring consultants. On-site support for staff located away from Edinburgh is provided by their host institutes, and we are grateful for the assistance of all involved.
IT support for BioSS has recently been augmented by employing an experienced Java Web programmer who also provides much needed support with Linux system administration. This will enable us to improve the security of our infrastructure and develop further tools to enable BioSS staff to work and collaborate more efficiently.
- BioSS Portal Secure Meeting client
The BioSS Portal provides a Secure Meeting client that allows users to share their desktops and applications over a secure connection. This means for example that it is possible for a BioSS expert in a particular interactive package to demonstrate its use to remote collaborators by letting them see sequences of point-andclick operations on their own computer screen.