Shutdown due to server maintenance on Fri, Nov 23
Due to server maintenance the whole project will shut down on Friday, November 23, from about 7.30 to 8.30 UTC. All parts of the project including the web portal will be affected. Sorry for this, we will keep the downtime as short as possible.

Best regards
Thomas 21 Nov 2012 | 21:09:13 UTC · Comment

Workunits for November upcoming
The workunits for the about 720.000 new protein sequences (for the November release of SIMAP) will be available directly after the last October batch has been distributed. Additionally, we will calculare further workunits of environmental sequences. We estimate that the November batch will need about four weeks of work.

Best,
Thomas 2 Nov 2012 | 7:11:52 UTC · Comment

Workunits for October upcoming
The workunits for the about 830.000 new protein sequences (for the October release of SIMAP) will be available from Mon, Oct 1 (morning). Additionally, we will calculare further workunits of environmental sequences. We estimate that the October batch will need about three weeks of work.

Best,
Thomas 30 Sep 2012 | 15:14:03 UTC · Comment

SIMAP workunits for metagenome sequences upcoming
We are starting the integration of new metagenomes such as from the Human Microbiome Projecte into SIMAP. This will require additional SIMAP calculations for two subsequent stages of processing. We will start with a batch of workunits that will need about 2 weeks for its calculation. Further batches will follow after the regular workunits in the beginning of September.

SIMAP workunits from environmental sequences and metagenomes are characterized by shorter average sequence lengths. Therefore more sequences are packed into each workunit, resulting in longer calculation time and higher credits per workunits.

Best regards
Thomas 14 Aug 2012 | 19:48:17 UTC · Comment

Workunits for August upcoming
The workunits for the about 480.000 new protein sequences (for the August release of SIMAP) will be available from Mon, Jul 30 (morning). We estimate that the August batch will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 28 Jul 2012 | 6:28:30 UTC · Comment

Workunits for July upcoming
The workunits for the about 380.000 new protein sequences (for the July release of SIMAP) will be available from Sun, July 1 (morning). We assume that the July batch will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 30 Jun 2012 | 7:09:01 UTC · Comment

Power shutdown finished - project online again.
The maintenance work on our power systems is now finished. All servers are operational again.

Best regards
Thomas 8 Jun 2012 | 14:06:04 UTC · Comment

Complete power shutdown of BOINCSIMAP on June 7/8th
Due to general maintenance of the electricity network of our building we will have to shutdown all our servers from June 7, 4 p.m. UTC to June 8, 4 p.m. BOINCSIMAP will be completely offline during that 24 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience. We assume that all workunits will have been distributed at that time.

Best regards
Thomas 31 May 2012 | 15:07:48 UTC · Comment

Workunits for June upcoming
The workunits for the about 520.000 new protein sequences (for the June release of SIMAP) will be available from Thu, May 31 (morning). We estimate that the June batch will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 29 May 2012 | 6:10:28 UTC · Comment

Workunits for May upcoming
The workunits for the about 400.000 new protein sequences (for the May release of SIMAP) will be available from Mon, Apr 30 (morning). We estimate that the May batch will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 28 Apr 2012 | 7:24:01 UTC · Comment

Workunits for April upcoming
The workunits for the about 380.000 new protein sequences (for the April release of SIMAP) will be available from Fri, Mar 30 (morning). We estimate that the April batch will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 28 Mar 2012 | 13:37:59 UTC · Comment

Workunits for March upcoming
The workunits for the about 485.000 new protein sequences (for the March release of SIMAP) will be available from Wed, Feb 29 (evening). We estimate that the batch for March will need about one..two weeks of work. To allow a smooth distribution of the results to all hosts, the maximum number of results in progress will be continuously increased from 2 to 50 per core.

Best,
Thomas 28 Feb 2012 | 17:19:30 UTC · Comment

Maximum number of results per host changed
With the new server software release installed in the end of January we experienced that many more workunits are sent to the hosts as usual. We are currently investigating this, seems that the project contiguration settings are differently interpreted by the new software. To avoid total overload of hosts by SIMAP results, we have reduced the daily maximum number of results per host to 300. We will check and adapt this limit during the next days continuously.

Best regards
Thomas 1 Feb 2012 | 15:18:33 UTC · Comment

Workunits for February upcoming
The workunits for the about 410.000 new protein sequences (for the February release of SIMAP) will be available from Wed, Feb 1. We estimate that the batch for February will need about two weeks of work.

Best,
Thomas 27 Jan 2012 | 14:54:45 UTC · Comment

Workunits for January upcoming
The workunits for the about 560.000 new protein sequences (for the January release of SIMAP) will be available from Thu, Jan 5. We estimate that the batch for January will need about two weeks of work.

Best,
Thomas 3 Jan 2012 | 15:54:03 UTC · Comment

Best wishes for 2012
The BOINCSIMAP team wishes all partipants a merry xmas and a happy new year.

Thank you for supporting our project and helping to keep the largest database of protein similarities and protein features up-to-date.

Best regards
The BOINCSIMAP team 24 Dec 2011 | 14:05:57 UTC · Comment

Workunits for December upcoming
The workunits for the about 500.000 new protein sequences (for the December release of SIMAP) will be available from Thu, Dec 1. We estimate that the batch for December will need about two week of work.

Best,
Thomas 30 Nov 2011 | 6:33:43 UTC · Comment

Workunits for November upcoming
The workunits for the about 600.000 new protein sequences (for the November release of SIMAP) will be available from Mon, Oct 31. We estimate that the batch for November will need about two week of work.

Best,
Thomas 29 Oct 2011 | 15:01:55 UTC · Comment

Workunits for October upcoming
The workunits for the about 260.000 new protein sequences (for the October release of SIMAP) will be available from Fri, Sep 30. We estimate that the batch for October will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 29 Sep 2011 | 5:44:02 UTC · Comment

Workunits for September upcoming
The workunits for the about 330.000 new protein sequences (for the September release of SIMAP) will be available from Wed, Aug 31. We estimate that the batch for September will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 30 Aug 2011 | 6:35:40 UTC · Comment

BOINCSIMAP shutdown on Aug 24/25
Due to regular construction work the power in one of our server rooms will be completely shut down on Aug 24 and 25. This will also affect the BOINC database and web servers. We will therefore shut down the entire BOINC project from Aug 24, approx. 10 a.m. to Aug 25, approx. 3 p.m. During this time BOINCSIMAP will not be available at all.

We apologize for this outage and will keep the downtime as short as possible.

Best regards,
Thomas 17 Aug 2011 | 8:56:50 UTC · Comment

Workunits for August upcoming
The workunits for the about 800.000 new protein sequences (for the August release of SIMAP) will be available from Mon, Aug 1. We estimate that the batch for August will need about two..three weeks of work.

Best,
Thomas 31 Jul 2011 | 11:32:03 UTC · Comment

Workunits for July upcoming
The workunits for the about 100.000 new protein sequences (for the July release of SIMAP) will be available from Fri, Jul 1. We estimate that the batch for June will need about two days of work.

Best,
Thomas 27 Jun 2011 | 7:13:10 UTC · Comment

Server outage due to technical maintenance
This afternoon the server was not available for several hours. This was due to regular technical maintenance that took much longer than expected due to unexpected issues. Now everything is running fine again - sorry for the long outage.

Best regards
Thomas 10 Jun 2011 | 15:20:01 UTC · Comment

Workunits for June upcoming
The workunits for the about 400.000 new protein sequences (for the June release of SIMAP) will be available from Wed, Jun 1. We estimate that the batch for June will need about one week of work.

Best,
Thomas 31 May 2011 | 11:14:57 UTC · Comment

Workunits for May ready
The workunits for the new protein sequences, for the May release of SIMAP, are now ready. These will be distributed immediately after the workunits from April - without break. We estimate that the batch for May will need about 3 weeks of work.

Best,
Thomas 25 Apr 2011 | 8:26:37 UTC · Comment

Last workunit series before returning to periodic work
The tremendous update of millions of new environmental sequences is almost finished. Thanks to all users for crunching these many workunits. We will now calculate the new sequences from protein databases available until end of March, to generate the April 2011 release of SIMAP. After these workunits we will return to the periodic operation of BOINCSIMAP, having new workunits only in the beginning of every month.

Best,
Thomas 30 Mar 2011 | 6:29:01 UTC · Comment

Best wishes for 2011
The BOINCSIMAP team wishes all partipants a merry xmas and a happy new year.

Thank you for supporting our project and helping to keep the largest database of protein similarities and protein features up-to-date.

Special thanks for the great support during the migration of the project to new hardware and to the new location.

Best regards
The BOINCSIMAP team 24 Dec 2010 | 15:39:25 UTC · Comment

Project URL changed and new work starting
We have now changed the project URL. Please reattach to the project using the new URL /boincsimap.

The new workunit batches will appear in the batchmonitor during the next weeks. We will calculate the sequence similarities and domains of about 400.000 new sequences imported until Dec 5, plus about 20 million new sequences from metagenomes to be imported in December. In total we expect work for 2..3 months. The estimate for progress and remaining work can be seen directly on the project web pages and will be updated automatically in the future.

We hope that you like the refurbished web pages. If you have any ideas for improvement, please post them in the forum.

Thanks for your support,
best regards
Thomas 6 Dec 2010 | 18:17:33 UTC · Comment

New project URL on Mon, Dec 6 approx. 6 p.m. UTC
The renewed project will move to the new project URL "/boincsimap" on Mon, Dec 6 approx. 6 p.m. UTC. Thereafter, new work will be available for about 2..3 months.

After the project has changed its URL, please disconnect and reconnect your boinc client to the new URL. Sorry for this - this URL change to the new (institution independent) domain will remain an once-in-the-lifetime event for BOINCSIMAP.

Best regards and thanks for your support
Thomas 5 Dec 2010 | 21:27:42 UTC · Comment

Server migration to Vienna: new hardware stable; new work upcoming.
During the last days we have tested the new hardware using the two series of recent simap and hmmer workunits. All tests have been passed, and we have optimized server parameters and settings. Sorry for a number of short shutdowns of the project due to such optimizations and thanks a lot to all participants for your great help.
Now we will finish the currently running two batches, as these contain several thousands of proteins newly imported in November and models from a new version of the Domain database InterPro (v29.0). The results of the test batches can thus be directly used for SIMAP.
After these successful hardware tests, we plan releasing the new website of the project in the end of November. The project will get a new URL, which will be announced very prominently so that all participants can detach and reattach. Continuous new work for about 2..3 months will be started thereafter in the evening of Dec 6. 18 Nov 2010 | 7:25:12 UTC · Comment

Server migration to Vienna: first step passed
The server has now been moved and preliminary configured in Vienna. It still uses the old project URL and the old website design. During the next weeks, we will test the technical performance and stability on the new hardware. During this time, smaller and larger chunks of workunits will be distributed. Although these are intended for testing, their results will be used and get credits as usual. If everything works fine, we will launch a renewed project website using a new project URL in December, and then start into production again.

best regards
Thomas 15 Nov 2010 | 19:04:10 UTC · Comment

BOINCSIMAP will move to a new location onto new hardware
Due to the move of parts of the BOINCSIMAP crew to Vienna in 2010, this project is now a joint project of the Technical University Munich and the University of Vienna.

The recent series of power faults, combined with defects of the UPS devices in our Munich facilities, has motivated us to move BOINCSIMAP now immediately to new hardware at the University of Vienna. This hardware is brand new and became available last week. We will now setup the new boinc servers (BOINC server, download-/upload server and database server) and run a first small test in December 2010. If everything works fine, the first full run of the new servers will start around January 7, 2011 after the new year holidays. We expect then 1..2 months of continuous work, as there are the new proteins of three months plus a couple of new metagenomes.

There will be a new URL for the project, but we will also keep the current URL operational for a longer period.

Thanks to all friends of SIMAP for your great work, help and the many discussions in the previous years. We look forward to another productive era starting next year.

Best regards from Vienna
Thomas 27 Oct 2010 | 20:25:27 UTC · Comment

Powerdown on Oct 11
We had again a power failure on the boinc server. This time the database stayd alive, but the server filesystem crashed dramatically. Although we use a journalling filesystem, the complete upload folder (containing all successfully uploaded but not yet validated results) got lost. As this area is highly dynamic, we did not include it into our daily backup plan so that we now cannot restore these results. As a workaround, we will grant these vanished results the same credits that are granted after validation of the workunits to the correct results. We are very sorry about this trouble. As a consequence, we will consider shutting down this project in 2 weeks and moving it to another, more safe hardware environment as soon as possible. 11 Oct 2010 | 18:41:53 UTC · Comment

Powerdown on Oct 6/7
Due to a series of power losses of the complete building, our project was offline for almost a day. Unfortunately the repeated power losses caused a serious crash of the BOINC database. Thus we had to recover the database from backup, reverting it to the status by Oct 6, 0:00 a.m. We have manually recovered the result table from the crashed database and thus have granted all credits for results that have been successfully validated between the date of the last backup and the crash.

Sorry for the trouble,
best regards
Thomas 7 Oct 2010 | 11:24:06 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of October 8
New workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 270,000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases and metagenomes into SIMAP until the end of September, will start delayed (for technical reasons regarding the finalization of the many workunits containing environmental sequences) in the evening (UTC) of October 8. 2 Oct 2010 | 19:00:40 UTC · Comment

New workunits in September
In September we will crunch three series of workunits: parts 5 and 6 of the large series containing sequences from new metagenomes imported in July/August. Thereafter approx. 300,000 workunits containing new regular sequences imported in August will be calculated. Finally, there will be the very last 500,000 workunits containing sequences from new metagenomes imported in July/August. Altogether we expect to have work for about 3 weeks in September. 5 Sep 2010 | 10:09:13 UTC · Comment

New workunits approx. until end of August
Since today afternoon we are distributing the last series of workunits containing new environmental sequences from CAMERA metagenomes. Probably these will need until the end of August to be calculated, so we will just continue after them with the regular workunits of September.

Thanks to all of you for crunching this large update!
Best,
Thomas 18 Aug 2010 | 14:47:16 UTC · Comment

Power outage on July 21
The main power cable has been damaged due to construction work around our building. This caused a power outage of several hours. Power has been restored and the servers are now running again.

Sorry for the interruption, best regards,
Thomas 21 Jul 2010 | 19:22:27 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of July 1
New workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 170,000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases and metagenomes into SIMAP until the end of June, will start in the evening (UTC) of July 1. 30 Jun 2010 | 8:31:56 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of June 1
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 200,000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases and metagenomes into SIMAP until the end of May, will start in the evening (UTC) of June 1. 31 May 2010 | 11:59:59 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of April 30
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 250,000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases and metagenomes into SIMAP until the end of April, will start in the evening (UTC) of April 30. 30 Apr 2010 | 8:36:19 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the morning (UTC) of March 31
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 1,200,000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases and metagenomes into SIMAP until the end of March, will start in the morning (UTC) of March 31. 30 Mar 2010 | 5:53:38 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of March 1
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of February, will start in the evening (UTC) of March 1. 28 Feb 2010 | 7:54:38 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the morning (UTC) of Januar 31
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of January, will start in the morning (UTC) of January 31. 30 Jan 2010 | 14:42:43 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of Januar 7
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of December, will start in the evening (UTC) of January 7. 7 Jan 2010 | 5:50:37 UTC · Comment

Best wishes for 2010
The BOINCSIMAP team wishes all partipants a merry xmas and a happy new year. Thank you for supporting our project and helping to keep the largest database of protein similarities and protein features up-to-date. 23 Dec 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New workunits in the end of November
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 300.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP in November, will start immediately after the currently running calculations. The January batch will start later as usual after the new years holidays on January 7th. 26 Nov 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

SIMAP featured in the 2010 Database Issue of Nucleic Acids Research
SIMAP in the news: a new scientific publication reports on the progress and new features of the SIMAP database. The fulltext article in the 2010 Database Issue of Nucleic Acids Research is . 12 Nov 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the morning (UTC) of October 31 and Win64 simap app
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 400.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of October, and approx. 5 million sequences from environmental genomes will start in the morning (UTC) of October 31. We will also test a 64bit simap application for Windows. This new app will be automatically installed on Windows64 BOINC clients. 30 Oct 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of September 30
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 430.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of September, will start in the evening (UTC) of September 30. We will also calculate a batch of new environmental sequences. 30 Sep 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits by August 28
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 100.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of July, has been started. 28 Aug 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits of a new SIMAP dataset available
New Workunits: Approx. 200.000 new workunits are that calculate the similarities of domain superfamilies. This dataset has been prepared in co-operation with the Gene3D team and initiates a novel aspect of SIMAP. If the test using the current approx. 200.000 workunits will be successful, we will maintain this dataset as part of SIMAP. It will be used to construct new versions of the Gene3D database. 24 Aug 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of July 31
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of the new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of July, will start in the evening (UTC) of July 31st. 30 Jul 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of July 01
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of the new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP until the end of June, will start in the evening (UTC) of July 1st. 29 Jun 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of June 01
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 650.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP in May, will start in the evening (UTC) of June 1st. 30 May 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of April 30
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 200.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP in April, will start in the evening (UTC) of April 30th. 29 Apr 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of March 31
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 260.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP in March, will start in the evening (UTC) of March 31st. 30 Mar 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of February 28th
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 300.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP in February, will start in the evening (UTC) of February 28th. 27 Feb 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

New Workunits in the evening (UTC) of February 1st
New Workunits: the calculation of similarities and features of approx. 250.000 new sequences, that were imported from protein databases into SIMAP in January, will start in the evening (UTC) of February 1st. 31 Jan 2009 | 0:00:00 UTC · Comment

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