2013-06-28
European mirror site of the UCSC Genome Browser at CeBiTec
The UCSC Genome Browser is pleased to announce the introduction of a new mirror site to serve our users in Europe. Genome-euro is an official European mirror site of the UCSC Genome Browser, at http://genome-euro.ucsc.edu. The server is physically located at the Universität Bielefeld Center for Biotechnology in Bielefeld, Germany, and is administered by UCSC. Genome-euro is meant to be an alternate, faster access point for those Browser users who are geographically closer to central Europe than to the western United States.
All functionality will be the same as on the US server, although Custom Tracks will not be transferred. Saved Sessions containing Custom Tracks will require some manual intervention.
When European users navigate to the US server home page and click the "Genomes" menu item, they will receive a notification that they have been redirected to the more geographically-appropriate server. They will have the option to remain on the US server, as described in our documentation.
The backup mirror in Aarhus, Denmark will continue to serve as a emergency site in the event of the official sites in California and Germany malfunctioning.
Thanks to Steve Heitner, Brooke Rhead, Galt Barber, Hiram Clawsen, Jorge Garcia and the rest of the Genome Browser staff for engineering and testing.
We wish to express our special thanks to our colleagues at the Universität Bielefeld Bioinformatics, especially Jens Stoye, for making this possible.