Today I shut down my #OMERO server.
I have been using it since ~2009 to store and manage all my #microscopy data from my PhD, my first postdoc, and my second postdoc. It holds ~115 GB of images, mostly of cultured human cells in mitosis and larval fly brains.
But it didn’t get any new data since March 2021, when upon finishing my second postdoc I left the bench behind to become a #biocurator. For the past three years, I kept maintaining it, upgrading the server to stay up-to-date with the latest versions.
But as it now quite clear to me that I will most likely not go back to being a wet lab scientist in the near or even not-so-near future (I love my #biocuration job too much), I couldn’t justify to myself the time spent in maintaining a server that I would most likely never use again.
So, I took a final dump of the database, a snapshot of the directory containing the raw images (all 115 GB of them), stored that away, and then shut down the server and removed any trace of it from my machine.
After three years, the last page of my former life as a wet lab scientist is finally turned.