Phylogenetic code in the cloud - can it meet the expectations?
Cloud computing has recently become very popular, and several bioinformatics applications exist already in that domain. The aim of this article is to analyse a current cloud system with respect to usability, benchmark its performance and compare its user friendliness with a conventional cluster job submission system. Given the current hype on the theme, user expectations are rather high, but current results show that neither the price/performance ratio nor the usage model is very satisfactory for large-scale embarrassingly parallel applications. However, for small to medium scale applications that require CPU time at certain peak times the cloud is a suitable alternative.
Kraut
Adam
A
BioTeam Inc., Middleton, MA, USA.
Moretti
Sébastien
S
Robinson-Rechavi
Marc
M
Stockinger
Heinz
H
Flanders
Dean
D
D019295:Computational Biology; D003205:Computing Methodologies; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D010802:Phylogeny; D012985:Software Design