Minimum Requirements and current NRAMM setup¶

Electron Microscope with its Controling Computer (Windows)¶

Microscope need to have the capacity for external control and network connected (See Network Configuration section for details on that. Here are known examples of Leginon implementation:

• FEI: Tecnai, Polara, Titan Krios with TEM Scripting
• JEOL: 1230, JEM3100FSC

Digital Camera¶

Gatan, Tietz, FEI Eagle-minimal 1kx1k, Direct Electron DE-12; NRAMM 4kx4k

Note: There is an unresolved issue in Insertion/Retraction control of FEI Falcon camera that requires effort from FEI before we can support it fully.

A Second Computer Running Linux (CentOS at NRAMM)¶

At NRAMM, we separate the three activities into different computers that serve about 15 people with three microscopes that could be running at the same time. All scopes share the same database, web server, and file server. Each microscope has its own processing computer.

We no longer consider using a computer with Windows PC as the second computer as an option. A group tried it and it could not handle the memory demand

CPU¶

Minimal 2 GHz;

NRAMM:

• Processing server: Single quad core (Intel Xeon E5540 2 2.53GHz). One computer per microscope.
• Database server: Duo quad core (2.6GHz)
• Web server: Single quad core (Intel Xeon 3.00GHz)

RAM¶

The whole system with its image processing, database query and web serving, needs a lot of memory. Realistically, you will need minimal of 4GB memory for all processing+database+web server activities for one microscope operation with 4k camera that serves two persons (one operates the scope, one just look at the images from the web viewers) at the same time. We know of at least one successful daily usage at this configuration. For 2k camera, an all-in-one computer with 3GB memory has also been used successfully. If you are buying a new computer, get at least 6GB memory would be a good idea.

At NRAMM, to serve about 15 people viewing images and with three microscopes that could be running at the same time:

• Processing server: 4GB physical memory and 2 GB swap for years, and now at 6GB and 6GB, respectively. One computer per microscope
• Database server: 16GB memory and 18GB swap.
• Web server: 4GB memory and 6GB swap.

Hard drive¶

10 GB for the softwares and maybe a few hours worth of data collection. Much larger
for routine use. NRAMM 45Tb and growing although some are archived.

Network connection speed¶

100 Mbps might be possible; NRAMM 1 Gbps

Leginon system components developed at Leginon home¶

Leginon Home: http://www.leginon.org/

Supporting packages and programs available through internet or your Linux distribution¶

There are minimum of ten packages or single programs, some of them are included in your
Linux distribution.

Leginon supporting programs available upon request¶

adaexp.exe that is required if film exposure is to be made through Leginon on FEI Tecnai
machines is available by request. Please contact Max Otten: (mto at nl.feico.com)
and let him know what version of the Tecnai user interface you are using.

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