Buffer(Ingestion) Server setup¶

NRAMM/SEMC uses a redundant system that keeps pre-processing (frame alignment and ctf estimation) independent between each Krios. The buffer server also has a large enough storage to hold two weeks to a month of movie frames in case primary storage needs service.

• Network:
  • To local network: 1x Dual 10GE SFP+ cards (2 ports)
  • To the camera computer: 10 GB Fiber direct connection - SFP+ optical module for 10GBASE-LR
  • To gpfs RAID: inifiniband - ConnectX-3 VPI adapter card, dual-port QSFP, FDR IB (56Gb/s) / 40GigE, PCIe 3.0 x8 8GT/s
• CPU: 2U Dual 2.1GHz Intel E5-2620 v4
• Memory: 128GB memory (8x 16GB)
• Storage: 9x 8TB 7.2K SATA drives, 1x 120GB SSD drive
• GPU: 2x NVIDIA PNY GeForce GTX 1080.

The software and configuration requirement is described here:

Software requirement for preprocessing¶

The same as any appion processing server.

Two files are essential which we run as root all the time.

• rawtransfer.py (Found in myami/leginon of your git clone) is used to move the movies from camera computer to the buffer server and change its name to match those of the Leginon sum images
• transfermonitor.sh (Found in myami/leginon) is used to move the movies to the primary storage.
• A third program run as cron job that removes frame movies accumulate on the buffer server after they are expired.

Activate the use of buffer server in leginon database.¶

Run myami/dbschema/tools/buffer_host_setup.py in Leginon environment.