The deployment and evaluation of a bioinformatics grid platform - The HUST_Bio_Grid

This paper reports our experience in the deployment of the Hust_Bio_Grid platform, which is a grid sub-platform that is specifically tailored towards the needs of bioinformatics. It enables the collaboration of multiple research institutes and facilitates the sharing of resources such as hardware, database software tools, etc. In particular, this paper presents a case study that addresses the deployment and reuse of services and applications through a standardized easy to use interface. It discusses the deployment of services including the requirements, the interface and the deployment process as a whole. Selected example services are discussed and relevant performance evaluations are presented. Through this scheme, all users including domain specific experts as well as generic software developers can contribute and deploy their own applications to the grid platform in a simple and efficient way. Thus, the actual functionality of the overall platform and the usability thereof is defined through the actual consumers and their specific needs.