About the platform

The Douglas Neuroinformatics Platform is a single-sign-on Ubuntu Linux based computer system. Originally the computing platform of the Douglas Cerebral Imaging Centre (CIC), it has grown and generalized to meet the informatics needs of the Douglas Research Centre as a whole.

Hardware

The system itself consists (as of mid-2021) of Linux-based single-sign-on user management system, along with a 1 PB storage system, ~40 8-12 core workstations with 16-32 GB of RAM, and a 10-node compute cluster of 12-core 48 GB RAM compute nodes. Primary servers are replicated across two sites for disaster recovery. Unified storage across systems is provided via NFS from the primary storage server to all systems. A heterogenous cluster compute environment is provided via a SLURM batch system providing access to the compute cluster as well as opportunistic scheduling on workstations.

Entry-level GPU computation is available on workstations to provide CUDA and OpenCL acceleration suitable applications.

Software

The platform workstations run Ubuntu Linux variants, with full productivity software (LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, etc), modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox), and a large suite of scientific software. Servers run Ubuntu Linux server, as well as compute nodes. Limited Windows workstations are available to provide access to proprietary software such as E-Prime. Scientific software is available in the software quarantine.