COH Information Technology Infrastructure:
COH has built a large-scale virtual infrastructure supported by both VMWare and hyper-converged technology like Nutanix. These resources provide COH with sufficient resources in order to scale horizontally and vertically. These new virtual technologies are not only scalable but have various components of reliability and redundancy build in, provide COH with a world class virtual technology which can grow as the needs grow.
COH is supported by a technical infrastructure designed to facilitate an agile, model-driven design/development process. Analysts and developers utilize Microsoft dot.net or Java development stacks. Data resources are managed in Microsoft SQL Server 2016 while application resources are automatically deployed via a 3rd party build management platform (Inedo Buildmaster) to Windows 2019 application servers.
Software development projects and activities maintain quality and traceability via a well-managed SDLC (Systems Development Lifecycle) through which builds of a given software product are promoted through three environments – Development, Staging, and Production with quality and approval checkpoints enforced along the entire build chain. A Continuous Integration framework automates software builds and promotions, all the while taking snapshots of source code at each step in the build chain to preserve traceability and provide a historical record of each and every deployment.
Current COH telecommunications infrastructure provides network connectivity through a fiber optic network and follows industry standard layout topologies supported by a wide array of Cisco network infrastructure hardware. COH’s fiber optics network is one of the most advance fiber optics networks implemented in a campus setting. Mission critical systems are housed in a new Tier 2 state-of-the-art data center. There are four 1.2MW diesel generators that operate in demand with load, backup power for 30 days, and 24/7 network monitoring.
The deployed workstation environment consists of recent Dell PCs running Microsoft Windows 10, utilizing Chrome and Microsoft Edge to access web resources. Intranet resources include shared databases and software applications for data pipelining, business intelligence and data visualization, LIMS, and Electronic Lab Notebooks. The COH Information Technology Services Department provides training and support for PC hardware and standard desktop software applications. The security and privacy of records and data are further protected using unique login ID and passwords in accordance with the Microsoft Windows Active Directory security framework, conforming to well-established computer security standards. Remote access to electronic information resources is handled via a dual mode solution – client-based Cisco ASA VPN, and Palo Alto Global Protect. All software and electronic information resources are included in the COH institutional backup / disaster recovery plan. The plan includes regularly scheduled backups onto digital tapes that are stored at an offsite location. An incremental backup is created daily for all main COH servers, and a full backup is created weekly.
Computing and Data Storage:
The COH Data Centers are currently engineered to host and support next level applications. Located in Irwindale CA, COH implements IT infrastructure best practice standards recognized across the industry. Storage offerings include SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network Attached Storage) technologies that provide both high availability (99.999%) and performance. These solutions are supported by its technology partners including Dell, IBM, NetApp, VMware, Nutanix and Cisco. Data protection includes backups on a nightly and quarterly basis via Veritas and Dell EMC solutions. To ensure business continuity, a second data center in Phoenix, AZ is used to provide disaster recovery capabilities via 2 x 10GB lines. The High-Performance Computing cluster at COH provides 7300 CPU cores, 80TB memory, 120 x NVIDIA A100 and 56 x NVIDIA V100 GPUs. Infrastructure is secured by its dedicated cybersecurity defense operations team. The COH data center currently houses multiple petabytes of data – over half being genomic sequence data. These solutions are designed to provide COH Research, DDCDS, Clinical, and backend infrastructure groups with enterprise level availability and reliability.
Last Update 09/12/2022