Computing/BioMicro Center

Intro

The BioMicro Center’s computing mission is to support a core set of bioinformatics applications and also to provide advanced computational, data storage, data security and data backup services. From BioMicro Center home page. See also General Help Page for DNA-NET Users.

Accounts

DNA-NET domain accounts give users access to storage on centrally managed fileservers. Data stored on these servers can be access from multiple operating systems. To get a DNA-NET account, send email to biosupport 'at' mit.edu with subject "new user" and the following information:

• First/last name:
• Athena username:
• Lab PI:
• Department:
• Room number/address:
• Phone number:

You can check the status of your request at the BioMicro Support Center You will receive a confirmation email when your account is created.

You must login for the first time using a Windows machine. Your username is your Athena username and your temporary password is your username. Your password must be changed on first login to a different password. This should be your Athena password, for uniformity.

Access

In addition to the Bionet storage, more space is available on R200 (which is physically located in building W91). To connect, follow procedure below but substitute the address (192.168.4.28\endy).

In Windows

Drive X: is mapped to your home directory at \\bionet\endy\homedirs\username
You may want to map drive Z: to \\bionet\endy to get easy access to the top level of the file share hierarchy:

• Right click My Computer
• Map network drive:
• Pick a drive letter: example Z:
• Folder: \\bionet\endy (or use IP address: 192.168.4.25\endy)

In OS X

Press Cmd+K in Finder to connect to server. Then type in: cifs:\\bionet\endy

In Linux

Create a mount point:

# mkdir /mnt/bionet

Add the following line into /etc/fstab:

bionet:/vol/vol0/endy   /mnt/bionet     nfs     rsize=32768,wsize=32768,hard,intr 0 0

Mount the file share:

# mount /mnt/bionet

Off campus

1. Download and install VPN client for your operating system from MIT Software Distribution
2. Establish a VPN connection to MIT
3. Access the lab file share:
   • Windows: type \\bionet.mit.edu\endy (or use IP address: 18.79.1.147\endy)
   • OS X: press Cmd+K in Finder to connect to server. Then type in: cifs:\\bionet.mit.edu\endy
   • Linux: follow instructions above (substitute bionet:/vol/vol0/endy for bionet.mit.edu:/vol/vol0/endy)

Windows users may also be able to join the DNA-NET domain from off-campus. In this case your local username may be not the same as your DNA-NET credentials:

• select: connect using a different username.
• enter you DNA-NET username as follows: yourusername@dna-net.mit.edu
• your DNA-NET password

Description of folder structure

• admin - administrative documents
• backups - backups of shmoo, model and habanero
• projects -
• homedirs - home directories of lab members
• .snapshot - an archive of the whole network file share:
  • weekly - last week
  • daily - last two days
  • hourly - last two hours

Miscellaneous

Storage quota for the lab as of June 9, 2005 is 100GB.

Joining DNA-NET domain:

• Need to have a working domain user account
• Use dna-net.mit.edu as domain name when joining

Local Administrators can install software locally. Automatic updates through MIT SUS (Software Update Services) server.

Domain controllers:
bmc-win2kdc1.dna-net.mit.edu
bmc-win2kdc2.dna-net.mit.edu

Hosts and websites:

• BioMicro Center Wiki (requires MIT personal certificate)
• bionet.mit.edu - FQDN for network file share
• Network Applicance help pages (real-time usage stats for bionet.mit.edu)
• BioMicro Center BioIT Group
• Master host file for DNA-NET
• Resources for system administrators
• Bionet systems status

DNS and NAT on Bionet:
Neither bionet nor nearstore have NAT entries on the Cisco. The MIT addresses are really MIT addresses. They also just happen to have interfaces configured on 192.168.4/24 and 10/8 [for the clusters]. Cisco does some magic when you ask it to resolve hosts for which it has a NAT entry. It actually intercepts the incoming DNS reply and re-writes the answer with the internal IP. - from Michael Vezza

Troubleshooting:
Tip from Michael Vezza: we use bionet's internal IP address for NFS mounts inside the firewall on all hosts. A simple entry in /etc/hosts should do.

192.168.4.25    bionet.mit.edu     bionet
192.168.4.27    nearstore.mit.edu  nearstore