BackgroundModern chemistry laboratories operate with a wide range of software applications under different operating systems, such as Windows, LINUX or Mac OS X. Instead of installing software on different computers it is possible to install those applications on a single computer using Virtual Machine software. Software platform virtualization allows a single guest operating system to execute multiple other operating systems on the same computer. We apply and discuss the use of virtual machines in chemistry research and teaching laboratories.ResultsVirtual machines are commonly used for cheminformatics software development and testing. Benchmarking multiple chemistry software packages we have confirmed that the computational speed penalty for using virtual machines is low and around 5% to 10%. Software virtualization in a teaching environment allows faster deployment and easy use of commercial and open source software in hands-on computer teaching labs.ConclusionSoftware virtualization in chemistry, mass spectrometry and cheminformatics is needed for software testing and development of software for different operating systems. In order to obtain maximum performance the virtualization software should be multi-core enabled and allow the use of multiprocessor configurations in the virtual machine environment. Server consolidation, by running multiple tasks and operating systems on a single physical machine, can lead to lower maintenance and hardware costs especially in small research labs. The use of virtual machines can prevent software virus infections and security breaches when used as a sandbox system for internet access and software testing. Complex software setups can be created with virtual machines and are easily deployed later to multiple computers for hands-on teaching classes. We discuss the popularity of bioinformatics compared to cheminformatics as well as the missing cheminformatics education at universities worldwide.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1758-2946-1-18) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Many universities use Symantec Ghost to image PCs in their campus computer labs. However, issues related to network traffic, multicasting, and file size create numerous difficulties when transferring image files.Tim Leamy at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) created a system using Microsoft's Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) to transfer Ghost images to PC. Allan Chen and Rob Smith have adapted the system to work at Stanford.The system uses BITS to transfer Symantec Ghost .gho and .ghs files to a FreeDOS partition on the client PC. The machine then rebuilds itself at the next reboot locally, making for extremely fast imaging times.BITS, which utilizes standard HTTP protocols, runs in the background using available network bandwidth. This leaves the workstation available for use by students. Because the file transfer is via HTTP, it works over all types of networking and is very robust. The image files themselves are stored on a standard web server. Actual downtime of the client is generally less than 10 minutes. Stanford University has adapted the UC Davis solution in a number of ways. The majority of the work has been in dealing with larger (14GB) image sizes and integrating the scripts and utilities into the Stanford environment. Scripting functionality has remained the same, though many of the actual scripts have been modified. This presentation will examine the original impetus and implementation at UC Davis, and Stanford's experiences in modifying that process to fit our needs.
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