Data processing
Data processing (DP) at SURF consist of two platforms, Spider and the Grid, both allow users to run highly parallel jobs on distributed resources. If your project is too big in scale for personal computers, or even cloud solutions then DP at SURF may be a good solution for you.
See more about Data Processing at SURF here.
The Grid
The grid is a transnational distributed infrastructure of compute clusters and storage systems. SURF is active as partner in various grid related projects such as the national Lifescience Grid, BiG Grid and the European Grid Infrastructure.
As part of the Dutch National Grid Initiative (NGI_NL), SURF offers people affiliated with Dutch universities and institutes access to Grid infrastructure. With the help of Grid large scale computational problems can be solved and large amounts of data can be stored. Grid computing is a form of distributed computing which can be very powerful when applied in the right way. The Grid consists of a large number of various clusters which are distributed all over the Netherlands and also abroad. The clusters are interconnected by fast network connections, provided by SURFnet. A Grid user is able to use all this computing power simultaneously, without having to log in at all the different sites. Grid middleware takes care of the distribution of all the 'jobs' a user submits. By a 'job' we mean the execution of a program that will run somewhere on a machine on the Grid.
On these pages you can find more information about this whole process.