Research Infrastructure Services (RIS)
RIS is a branch of WashU IT that provides a University-wide access to a common data-storage, scientific compute, and computer networking platform for research purposes.
RIS additionally provides research-oriented applications and services and consulting/engagement services as well. Their basic motto is to "allow researchers to focus on research and not the technology teams and needs."
The data storage platform is a scalable, high-performance and distributed storage infrastructure with an integrated long-term archive and features to facilitate data analysis, management, curation, and retention. All faculty involved in research have access to 5TB of free Active storage.
The scientific compute platform provides WashU research faculty access to computing resources and a "batch job scheduler" that runs large-scale, parallel computing tasks with access to many CPU and GPU cores, large amounts of RAM, high-speed networks, and high-performance storage systems.
Many I2DB divisions and WUSM departments rely upon RIS for their computational and data needs.
RIS has a lot of technical documentation about their services at https://docs.ris.wustl.edu/.
Batch-Oriented Computing vs Service-Oriented Computing
The RIS scientific compute platform is a HPC cluster currently optimized for batch-oriented computing, or HPC workloads. What does this mean?
HPC workloads are designed to run to complete a complex task in the shortest possible time (even if this is a long time). Think of C/C++ programs, or python scripts that process some kind of data; they have clearly defined start and stop program execution times.
Service-oriented computing, are programs optimized for continuously running applications. Think of web servers, microservices, and traditional databases. These are programs that are meant to run without clearly defined execution stop times, and have "users" that may arrive in an ad-hoc manner to request some data and/or computation.
The RIS cluster isn't optimized for service-oriented computing. Please explore other options for those use cases.