When I wrote my Master’s thesis on 3D protein structure alignment 15 years ago, predicting the folding of a protein was a very difficult problem. Fast forward 15 years and it still is a difficult problem… and far from solved.
What changed is that with CryoEM, discovering the 3D structure of a molecule, like a protein, has become faster and cheaper than with previous methods, like x-ray crystallography. Important research fields like drug design rely on predicting or discovering the 3D structure of novel proteins, so it’s not a surprise that CryoEM is considered a game-changer.
Like other imaging technologies in life science, cryo-electron microscopes create lots of high-resolution images that need to be ingested from the machine, processed in parallel by GPU clusters, and stored reliably for a long time. This is why CryoEM workflows require a reliable high-performance scale-out file system.
Five ways Quobyte speeds up your CryoEM workflows and simplifies your storage operations
Scalable High-Performance Storage
Quobyte is a true scale-out storage system where the performance scales linearly with the number of storage servers. Need double the performance because you added GPUs to your compute cluster? Just add more storage servers and you’ll get more performance instantly. Storage capacity also scales linearly, so you can just add more disks when you need more storage.
Combine Flash and Hard Disks for the Best Performance and Cost
Do you need high performance from your storage system but you also want to store large amounts of data for years in a cost-effective way? Quobyte lets you combine NVMe and hard disks in the same cluster so you get the best of both worlds.
24/7 Uptime and Easy Maintenance
Quobyte allows you to run your storage 24/7 to make sure you maximize the return on investment in your cryo-electron microscopes. All maintenance on a Quobyte cluster is non-disruptive, meaning you can do maintenance at any time during the day without disrupting users or workflows.
Quobyte Makes Storage Simple
Do you know how to manage Linux servers? Then you can run Quobyte storage within minutes. Quobyte is just another Linux application you can download, install and manage yourself. We made sure that our storage system is “real software” that’s easy to use and manage. You can get started right now with our Free Edition.
Strong Data Protection and Security
End-to-end checksums ensure that data integrity is guaranteed for years, even when disks break or networks flip bits. Combine this with our end-to-end encryption for securely storing valuable data — protected at rest and in transit.
Want to Know More About Quobyte?
Schedule a call with a Quobyte Engineer today to learn how we can help you achieve faster results.
Originally posted on Quobyte’s blog on December 15, 2021.
