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Update to CHPC BLAST sequence databases

Posted: June 28, 2019

BLAST USERS:

The CHPC maintains a number of sequence databases for searching with NCBI’s BLAST software.  We are moving these databases into several locations in the /scratch file system to improve performance and reduce BLAST’s impact on the /uufs file system. The blast/2.3.0 and blast/2.7.1 modules will be modified to direct your BLAST processes to one of these locations, depending on which cluster you are using. The change of location should be transparent to any scripts using BLAST as long as you rely on the BLASTDB environment variable as set by the blast modules.

The blast modules will be updated to implement these changes on Monday, July 1. Access to the old database location, /uufs/chpc.utah.edu/sys/installdir/blastdb, will be discontinued on Wednesday July 3.

If you manually set BLASTDB to access these databases please update your scripts by July 3. We suggest the following settings:

  Cluster      Database file location
   redwood      /scratch/mammoth/serial/app-repo/blastdb/DbFiles
   kingspeak      /scratch/general/lustre/app-repo/blastdb/DbFiles
   notchpeak      /scratch/general/lustre/app-repo/blastdb/DbFiles
   ember      /scratch/general/nfs1/app-repo/blastdb/DbFiles
   lonepeak      /scratch/general/nfs1/app-repo/blastdb/DbFiles


We will continue to update these databases on a monthly basis, typically on the 5th of the month. 

If you have any questions or concerns about this please contact us at helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu.

Thank you!

Last Updated: 6/10/21