Deploying HPC Clusters: Effortless with HP and Microsoft
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This session explores the HP Cluster Platform Workgroup System and Windows HPC Server 2008, which you can combine to create a powerful high-performance computing (HPC) environment.
Alanna Dwyer, manager of HP clusters marketing, begins the presentation by describing HP's focus on helping customers deploy HPC clusters. Alanna notes several business and research outcomes of HP's focus on HPC clusters, such as faster time to solution, enhanced insight, and higher quality. She also points out the ways in which HPC can help customers sharpen their competitive edge, she addresses the realities of the current economic pressures, and she describes how HPC helps customers meet their spending concerns.
Alanna then introduces the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio (UPC), which is designed to deploy quickly to give customers more control of power and cooling costs, to adapt to phased spending, and to minimize the IT workload. Alanna describes the UPC architecture, including a description of the hardware and software options. To illustrate HP's expertise in designing the UPC, Alanna points out the significant share of the high-performance computing market HP currently holds. UPC is designed to be a "supercomputer in a box," and Alanna lists several customer benefits of deploying a UPC cluster. This session includes labeled photos of the UPC hardware, and Alanna spends significant time explaining the options available in form factor, number of nodes and blades, and general configurations for UPC clusters.
Alanna then describes describes the hardware management of HP HPC cluster hardware using the Onboard Administrator. The Onboard Administrator is independent from the cluster operating system and can be used to set up passwords and determine boot order. The Onboard Administrator monitors power, temperature, and system health, and it provides remote access to the management interface and a remote console to each server. Alanna provides screenshots and describes the management interface and remote console in detail.
Next, Norma McKinney, senior product manager on the Microsoft HPC team, describes how Windows HPC Server 2008 complements HP HPC clusters. Norma describes current HPC issues, how Microsoft can help resolve these issues, and Microsoft investments in HPC. Norma highlights the main updates included in HPC Server 2008 in the areas of reliability, manageability, and performance. Norma then outlines the Microsoft HPC productivity vision for administrators, application developers, and end users. Norma also delves into updates in the Microsoft HPC Pack 2008, which include new capabilities for interacting with systems management, job scheduling, networking and Message Passing Interface (MPI), and storage. Norma concludes with a version comparison of Windows Computer Cluster Server 2003 and HPC Server 2008.
Alanna wraps up the session with a description of the ongoing partnership between Microsoft and HP.
