Computing hardware for big data editing, storage, and analysis

研究的大数据时代导致了雪崩般的数据，这些数据掩埋了圭尔夫大学动物生物科学系(原畜禽科学系)目前的计算机存储和处理技术。不断增加的数据处理能力已经超过了当前正确、高效和及时分析数据的能力。这笔赠款将用于购买三个高性能计算机节点、一个存储服务器和一个光纤网络，以便将新的节点和存储服务器与新闻部现有的计算机节点和存储设备相结合，用于涉及大数据的跨学科和协作研究，这是精准农业新研究的一个共同特点。动物生物科学系有一个充满活力和生产力的团队，由27名教员、大约110名研究生和20名博士后组成，他们从事营养、行为、生理学、肉类科学、遗传学和基因组学方面的研究。在过去的十年里，农业部和世界各地的研究方向已经转向与精准农业相关的技术，如不同的组学(如基因组学、蛋白质组学、代谢组学)、实时记录和监测等，这些技术产生了大量需要处理、存储和分析的数据。为应对这些计算需求，建议的设备是一个至少150TB的中央高性能文件存储系统，用于研究人员主目录，具有多个高性能节点、大容量内存、多个核心系统通过10 GB/S交换机连接到存储。这些功能结合在一起，将允许同时运行5倍于当前完成的作业，预计每个作业的运行速度将提高5-10倍。与互联网的高速连接还将允许与其他机构的合作研究人员以及自己的研究站(阿尔马、阿尔克尔和埃罗拉)进行大数据交换。获得更快、更强大的计算硬件将提高动物生物科学部涉及大数据的研究的质量和生产率，这对该部保持和加强其在为国家和国际问题提供农业解决方案方面的领导地位至关重要，同时提高农民、农业食品系统和加拿大工业的盈利能力和竞争力。

The big data era of research has caused an avalanche of data that has buried the current computer storage and processing technology in the Department of Animal Biosciences (formerly Department of Animal and Poultry Science) at University of Guelph. The ever-increasing processing of data has outstripped the current ability to analyze data properly, efficiently, and in a timely manner. This grant will support the purchase of three high performance computer nodes, a storage server and a fabric network to integrate the new nodes and storage server to the computer nodes and storage currently available in the Department for interdisciplinary and collaborative research involving big data, a common feature of novel research in precision agriculture. The Department of Animal Biosciences has a vibrant and productive group of 27 faculty and about 110 graduate students and 20 postdocs, who conduct research in nutrition, behaviour, physiology, meat science, genetics, and genomics. Over the last ten years the direction of research in the department and around the world has moved towards precision agriculture related technologies, such as the different omics (e.g. genomics, proteomics, metabolomics), real time recording and monitoring, etc., which yield big amounts of data to be processed, stored and analyzed. The proposed equipment to face these computational demands is a central high performance file storage system with at least 150TB for researcher home directories with several high performance nodes, large memory, many core systems connected to the storage via 10GB/s switches. These features combined will allow for running 5 times as many jobs simultaneously as currently done and it is anticipated that each job will be 5-10 times faster. High speed connectivity to the Internet will also allow big data exchanges with collaborating researchers in other institutions, as well as own research stations (Alma, Arkell, and Elora). Access to a faster and more powerful computing hardware will improve the quality and productivity of research involving big data in the Department of Animal Biosciences, which will be essential for the Department to maintain and increase its leadership in providing agri-based solutions to national and international issues while enhancing profitability and competitiveness of farmers, the agri-food systems, and Canadian industry.