Add High Availability to your PACS on a shoestring: Part II

Posted by Martin P in DCM4CHEE, High Availability, Infrastructure, PACS General      3 comments

Oct
19

Getting the Hardware

Previous entry in this series: Introduction and Architecture.

To do this, we need 4 boxes.  We need two servers and two NAS storage arrays.  Actually, we’ll need at least 5 – since we’ll need some kind of network infrastructure to connect them, but I’m going to consider that outside the scope of these articles.  There will be a need for at least 4 network ports (see discussion on servers, below).  There are some wrinkles anyone not familiar with a datacentre environment might not think of, so I’ll try to spell them out.

The title of this series suggests that High Availability can be achieved on a shoestring.  I believe that to be true, but there is something that should not ever be skimped on – the hardware.  All of the software involved in this solution is free but hardware is not.  Putting this solution in place presents a potential point of failure for your workflow, so you should pony up, and get the best hardware that you can afford.

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A supercomputer under your desk?

Posted by Martin P in Infrastructure      No comments

Oct
19

Right. Time to try and catch up.

Apparently even though Moore’s Law is still alive and kicking, the processing power needed to fulfill high resolution visualisations with the considerable increase in CT, MR and PET data volumes has outstripped the scope of simple desktop systems, and 3D visualisation has for the last few years been driven by the server.

that may change with a growing trend for desktop supercomputers at an approachable cost.

The system can be expanded to an 80-core system with a capacity of up to 960GB of memory.

That’ll do.  I’ll have one for Christmas.