We are adding about 400 computers to the project at our business and we need to know what server address(s) to allow through the firewall so the Rosetta client can download work.

The client is designed to be very easy for you. It does all of it's work on the same port (80) that your browser uses. And all interactions are initiated by the client, so you do not need to open any firewall ports for any inbound traffic.

The only other consideration is the ports used by the client threads to communicate within the localhost, and whether you are going to connect to client machines remotely.

400 machines! That's great! Be sure to post any further questions.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

...or did I miss the question?? Do the machines have restrictions on IPs they are allowed to browse to?

If so, there are presently 4 servers active, but that might change over time. Each file your client is directed to download has references to each of the 4 systems for failover support. Which system you get at the top of the list will be determined by the timezone your machines report being in. Again, that could change over time.

The 4 servers at present are:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/
http://srv1.bakerlab.org/
http://srv3.bakerlab.org/
http://srv4.bakerlab.org/

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

We currently restrict almost all internet traffic to our machines because they are in a hospital environment and dont really need it, and we have had virus issues in the past. We added 13 new machines yesterday to start off with and they started up and ran when they were set on DHCP with open internet access, but when we put them behind the firewall, it doesn't look like they connected, or at least they didn't finish any units. I'll add those sites to our firebox and see what happens. Thanks.

Right, DHCP won't matter, because all connections originate on the client machine. As a simple test, go to the machine, open a browser and hit each of those 4 host names. If that works, then BOINC will work too... on that machine anyway ;)

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Right, DHCP won't matter, because all connections originate on the client machine. As a simple test, go to the machine, open a browser and hit each of those 4 host names. If that works, then BOINC will work too... on that machine anyway ;)

They all run through the same firebox and router. I checked all 4 sites, and they all do work. They aren't pumping out as much as i'd hoped for being dual-core machines, but we'll wait and see what happens.

Have you set your "Computing preferences" to allow a maximum of 4 CPUs to be used? Otherwise, I think BOINC defaults to only run on one core of the machine it is installed on.

If these machines are going to be running 24hrs a day, you'll probably want to kick up the Rosetta preference for the preferred runtime as well. It will save you considerable internet traffic by completing more models on each task you receive before reporting them back and getting another.

The default is 3hrs. You might want to go to 12 or even 24hrs. It doesn't may a huge difference. Just easiest if you establish this value up front rather then trying to change it later, because this can easily lead to clients requesting too much work.

I'd also suggest you set things up to only use the network from say 10PM to 5AM, and to "connect to network" every 1.2 days (or higher) with an additional .25 days (or higher) or so of work. This way BOINC network activity will not be occuring during the day, leaving internet bandwidth for your prime usage. And the client will grab enough work to keep it busy through at least the following evening, even if some tasks complete a bit ahead of the runtime preference. Be sure to set your network activity to run "...based on preferences", to enforce the time of day restriction.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Jon, when you have some time, please add some comments to the thread about how to bring more users to Rosetta:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=1238

Just an outline of some of the hurdles you had to overcome to make this happen, and how you addressed the various concerns that were no doubt voiced as you proposed this project.

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Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Well, the way i started was i saw a youtube video and though it was interesting, so i started running it on my Quad-core at home. I work in IT at a small hospital and we have lots of idle time on some of our servers, so i put it on there. My fellow IT coworkers were interested, so they started running it as well. Then we decided that it would be good PR if we started running it on all of our machines in our hospital. We are just starting to implement it, but so far so good. We have it running on several Quad-core servers and several dual cores, and about 30 PC's i believe. Hopefully we can get it going on all the machines soon.