Poster by: Andrey Kharuk, University of Auckland.
eResearch is research enhanced by advanced Information Technology, particularly data capture and storage, computational processing and simulation, and advanced collaborative tools (such as, multipoint video conferencing and web portals). eResearch environment of the University of Auckland is the direct successor of BeSTGRID (Broadband enabled Science and Technology GRID) Project funded from NZ Tertiary Education Commission Innovation and Development Fund. BeSTGRID evolved into a fully-functional eResearch infrastructure for the University of Auckland and allowed researches to do ‘faster, better and different’ research.
The eResearch Infrastructure via KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Educational Network) delivers technologies and tools such as Grid Computing, Shared DataStorage, Sakai Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and Web Services for a number of research groups as inside the University as well outside. Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago, USA), BioEngineering Institute, BioInformatics Institute, Department of Psychology, Ecology and Animal Behaviour Laboratory, GNS Science, Human Immunology Laboratory, Landcare Research, NZ BioMirror, NZ Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulations, Social Statistics Research Group are formed an incomplete list of eResearch consumers.
Grid Computing provides computational resources based on BeSTGRID Auckland Cluster (10 nodes, 80 CPUs, 160GB of distributed memory) as a New Zealand part of Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS). Users can submit jobs using command line interface, NZ Bioportal or Grisu tool. The Shared Datastorage (30TB disk space) sliced between many users of eResearch environment and they can get access to their data using either FTP or Samba or FTP protocols. Several groups are using shared MySQL server who keeps their databases on the DataStorage. Sakai VRE counts about 100 worksites and 900 users around the world. Among Web Services there are such services as BeSTGRID MediaWiki, BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) standalone server, FTP server, University’s GEON (the Geosciences Network) node, Nesstar WebView server, JBoss Portal and Geoserver, Shibbolized OpenIdP and WAYF servers and some more. eResearch infrastructure is still under construction but already gives researchers a seamless way to work from desk-to-desk.