DB4SCI Design Goals

• Fast, easy way to create database instances. Zero barriers, no request forms, no ticket system.
• Container-centric. No software installs, just pull PostgreSQL or other databases from Docker hub.
• Get out of the DBA business. Give uses full admin rights to manage their own databases, but, at the same time provide nightly backups.
• Encourage database usage for scientific data and work-flow management. Databases can be shared and offer current access. Influence the culture and offer a better alternative to spreadsheets.
• Sufficient performance to use relational databases to aggregate results of HPC workflows.
• DB4SCI is easily extensible. At present MyDB supports four major DB platforms. To add additional platforms just update the configuration file and define the name, image and version of the DB container. On the backend you need to write Python code to implement a few methods: db_create, db_backup, create_user, check_user.

Deployment

Docker install is the main requirement for DB4SCI. At the Hutch DB4SCI runs on a dedicated physical server with a few hundred terabytes of NVMe SSD storage. The system runs Ubuntu 16.04 and storage is configured with ZFS. This configuration is supports more than 50 database instances. DB4SCI could also be deployed on EC2 instances in AWS or in other clouds.