Connecting your instruments to Analytical Studio Express
Automating your Data processing
Analytical Studio Express (AS Express) and Analytical Studio Express Instrument Agent are designed to work in concert with each other to ensure reliable communication and handling of data files for processing.
How does Virscidian collect the data from the instruments?
Analytical Studio Express Instrument Agent is a lightweight application that is installed on the computer that is controlling each of your analytical instruments. This agent is responsible for knowing when a data file has been created and dealing with the transfer of the file(s) to the Analytical Studio Express processing environment.
Why use an instrument agent and a processing server?
Having a small software agent which is installed on each instrument computer and dedicated to looking for new data files is an extremely efficient way to know when new files have been written to disk on each of your instruments.
The Instrument Agent only communicates with Analytical Studio Express when there is data that needs to be handled. If there is no data then then is no periodic communications required, which helps to reduce network traffic noise, something that your IT Group are often interested to know about.
We also find that having less network noise and message interrupts in communications between your instrument and it's host controlling software helps to ensure higher reliability for the entire solution. For example, modern LC/MS instruments can be extremely data intensive requiring as much computer CPU and communications bandwidth as possible to capture all the acquired data. By reducing any secondary computer communications helps to ensure overall system reliability.
Another factor in the operational effectiveness of your systems, is configuration and reliability of the implementation over time. In our experiences we have found that having to setup mapped drives and ensure visible access to individual directories across many laboratory instrument PCs can be problematic when security rights are changed, directories are remapped and computers are upgraded. Using a local instrument agent allows us to simplify the configuration overhead ensuring reliable connectivity between the instrument PC and the processing server environment (Analytical Studio Express).
Ultimately Analytical Studio Express Instrument Agent is all about ensuring you have your data processed by a remote computer in the most efficient and reliable way that minimizes the risk to your acquisition data system.
Additional Information
What Products are required in Addition?
For our remote server side or dedicated processing PC, file management and processing you would need Analytical Studio Express.
For each instrument that is responsible for acquired the raw data, you would need to install Analytical Studio Instrument Agent.
How scalable is this really?
We have direct experience in running (10's) of LC/MS instruments concurrently and analyzing the output from all of these using a load balanced server farm. The complete solution was specified and designed to handle more than 2,000,000 LC/MS/UV/ELSD/CLND substance analyses per year. Indeed, in our experience, exceeding this number can be handled very effectively with our current architecture and design philosophy.
Recommended solutions based on volume of samples analyzed
Whether you need to analyze very small numbers of samples or ultra high volumes of data, our architecture is designed to scale as your needs scale. As the numbers increase, additional horsepower can be added to ensure a balanced processing response time.
Talk to us about performing a performance profile of your data and processing needs to determine the optimal configuration of Analytical Studio Express and Analytical Studio Express Instrument Agent(s).