Hello, you may have heard of the compute cluster of Amazon that everyone can use on a per-cpu-minute-basis. It is pretty amazing. 1000 CPU hours is 100$ or in other words if you exchange your 100% busy 500$ zero-energy machine every 7 months then you are better of with Amazon.
I found a Debian Etch image http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=639 and some Ubuntu with minimal Bioinformatics http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1259&categoryID=101 I cannot tell exactly about the difficulties that arise with an image that comprises the complete Debian-Med. However, at least for docking or molecular dynamic with gromacs, I could well imagine that this would make perfect sense to try. I will not need it myself in the next couple of months, but if someone of yours is thinking about hiring an extra technician to help a cluster, then please be aware that 50k$ would pay for 500kh which is 57 CPU-years alone. What I personally like is that one can easily specify costs for cluster-computations in grant proposals. Best, Steffen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
