Dynamic Cloud Services: The Discovery Informatics Platform for Research (DIPR)

ERIS is now pleased to offer its new Discovery Informatics Platform for Research, or DIPR. DIPR ("dipper") is a flexible cloud computing service which offers research customers IT power and services without the burden of purchasing or managing physical server hardware. An added benefit towards protection of patient health information is that the entire infrastructure is maintained within the confines of Partners secure data centers and on the PHS network.

The following services are available within DIPR:

• Application/web hosting
• File storage
• Database hosting/management

Requesting Discovery Informatics Platform for Research (DIPR) Resources

From customers who have only general requirements to those with detailed technical specifications, ERIS will be able to assist in providing appropriate services within DIPR. To make a request for services, begin by sending an email to Research Computing. Once this initial request is made, an ERIS systems administrator will look to schedule a conversation with you to determine your baseline needs. From there, we will be able to determine the various types and levels of components that will be necessary to facilitate the core business requirement. At a high level, we'll be looking to determine the following:

• A description of the type of system looking to be built-out, with as much detail as you can provide. Customers with discreet technical requirements may make specific technology and/or version requests (e.g. JBoss, Tomcat, Oracle, etc.). However, it is sufficient to simply indicate the need for a web server and file storage for a specific project, for example, and ERIS will work to evalutate and provide the technical details. In either case, we'll be looking to find out as much as possible about what the user is trying to accomplish from a high level so as to be able to mold the best fitting technical solution.
• A general level of workload. Certain detailed information (if known) might include:
  • Number of concurrent users
  • Type of requests being made to the system (e.g. database queries, web page requests, etc).
  • Projected amount of initial structured (DB) storage initially and after 1 year
  • Projected amount of initial unstructured (file) storage initially and after 1 year
• A name or moniker for the project. If there are not specific requirements for naming the various resources, variations of the project name will be leveraged in creating hostnames, database/instance names and username/password combos.