For a successful CERF ELN software system implementation, our customers must provide a suitable computer and network hardware environment.
CERF Desktop App
Hardware:
- 2.4 GHz Processor
- 8GB Ram (16GB or more if running multiple applications at once)
- 10GB free disk space for application resources
Operating Systems:
- Windows
- Win 11 Pro / Home, Win10 Pro / Home, Win Server 2008-2019
- MacOS
- Mojave 10.14.6+
- Linux – (CERF not fully released yet)
- Ubuntu Desktop 20+ LTS
CERF Server
Hardware:
- 6 Core 2.4 GHz Processor
- 32GB Ram (16GB min)
- SSD Drives
- 5GB free disk space for CERF Server resources
- 250-500GB additional storage per user
- Storage dependent on file types and sizes user will add to CERF
- Can be setup as a Secondary drive directly connected to server
- Ethernet connection
Operating Systems:
- Windows
- Win 11 Pro, Win10 Pro, Win Server 2008-2019
- MacOS
- Catalina 10.15 (Newer versions possible using non-local MySQL 5.7 Server)
- Linux
- Ubuntu Desktop/Server 18.04 LTS
Anti-virus:
CERF server access to the file system and database must have a low latency or CERF user’s will experience a perceived slowdown of the server. Active scans by any Anti-Virus software will cause the CERF server to appear to run very slow. Customers will need to determine a compromise between the user perceived experience vs higher security of systems.
In most cases, adding an exception to live scan of the CERF FileStore as well as exceptions for the Apache Tomcat and MySQL processes will alleviate the bottleneck caused by the Anti-Virus software. Lab-Ally does recommend periodic off usage scans of the file system at rest in order to improve security of files. Anti-virus scans should not be set to quarantine files directly, but rather inform the security team with the assistance of Lab-Ally support to ensure the integrity of the dataset. Immediate quarantine of files may cause inconsistencies in user data and should be done with care.
Web Browsers:
- Windows
- Microsoft Edge
- Opera
- Google Chrome
- MacOS
- Safari
- Opera
- Google Chrome
- Linux
- Chromium
Cloud:
CERF server has been tested in AWS Cloud. Due to the distributed nature of Cloud Infrastructure, minor performance degradation may be experienced. Following is a list of infrastructure components tested to work with CERF
- t2medium – 4GB, t3medium – 4GB
- Windows Server 2008-2019 AMI
- EBS Volume 60GB+
- Instance type may need to be increased dependent upon expected user usage and distance from Cloud servers
- 2 or more Cores preferred
- MySQL 5.7 RDS – Default is to install MySQL on the Windows server
- Oracle12c RDS
- Lab-Ally does not provide support for Oracle DB. Clients that choose to use Oracle will need to provide their own support team to work alongside Lab-Ally for connection to CERF
Notes:
- CERF needs low latency connection to FileStores on connected hard disks, as well as low latency to the SQL database. Using network based drives and / or network database servers will effect the perceived speed by the end user of CERF. Lab-Ally recommends using directly connected hard drives and a SQL database running on the same server as CERF.
- While it is possible to run CERF server in distributed systems, there is a noticeable performance decrease by the end user.
Please contact support@lab-ally.com for additional information and clarification