Delivering an HPC Solution Progressive designs a 48-node cluster for a top technological institute of India
O
ne of the top technological institutes based in North India wanted to add a HPC cluster to their setup to aid the extensive research activity that it conducts. The Institute imparts training to students to help them become competent engineers and scientists. It awards Bachelor, Master and Doctoral programs in various branches of technology and science.
A New Cluster
In Brief Challenge A top technological institute of India wanted to deploy an HPC cluster to help in their research activities. Since the Institute works in the cutting edge technology space, they had high expectations. And hence, this was a prestigious project. Solution Progressive designed an HPC cluster based on HP systems running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There was a master node and 48 compute nodes, all running on AMD Opteron processors. Gigabit interconnects were provided. OpenPBS was provided for job scheduling and Ganglia for monitoring. Benefits The Institute has got a solution, all parts of which are proven in the HPC space. The solution delivers high availability, and ease of management. Progressive helped the Institute all through the installation and acceptance period.
The Institute wanted to add a 48-node cluster to its existing high performance computing setup. For this it floated a tender and conducted due diligence. Progressive designed a cluster that was based on standard requirements for HPC clusters. The entire solution was based on HP’s hardware. Progressive’s solution was comprised of a master node and 48 compute nodes. The file system was NFS. Gigabit interconnects were suggested for connectivity. Job allocation and resource management was through OpenPBS, while the monitoring tool was Ganglia. The entire system was to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Compilers from Portland were also included in the solution. The Institute chose to go with this solution as it was convinced by Progressive’s technical expertise. This was a prestigious project as the cream of technology professionals of the country chose Progressive to deliver an HPC solution for them.
Leveraging HP’s Expertise
HP has considerable worldwide expertise in the HPC space. In India, however, HP had not had such a project so far. But with the organization’s expertise, and that of the Progressive and HP India team, a solution was arrived at. Since the entire cluster operation depends on the availability of the master node, Progressive went with an HP DL585 server for this. This is an AMD Opteron based model, with 16 GB of memory and SCSI storage. This node manages the authentication, file server and the entire cluster. The compute nodes were HP DL145, also Opteron-based. The interconnects provided were of high speed and low latency. The systems, interconnect, storage and software stack delivered for this solution are all proven in the HPC space. “It provided the flexibility to allow a submitted MPI workload to be executed across many nodes acting as one, or all nodes working in a uniform manner,” says the Solution Architect, Progressive Infotech. copyright © 2007
The system provided the flexibility to allow a submitted workload to be executed across many nodes acting as one, or all nodes working in a uniform manner
High Levels of Service
Ease of Management
— Solution Architect, Progressive
Progressive was committed to working closely with the Institute to provide training and support to ensure that the installation and the user acceptance periods went smoothly. Once all the systems had been setup and installed, the solution was also tested to ensure that it would perform as per the Institute’s requirements. The maintenance of the system hardware was provided for a period of three years. With this solution, the Institute got a solution that was not only proven in the HPC arena, but that was also easy to manage. This is a critical issue for HPC cluster performance, and Progressives solution has been able to deliver that to the Institute. After the successful deployment of the HPC cluster at this Institute in 2006, other technological institutes have also approached Progressive to deliver their HPC clusters.
The HPC Solution Master Node: One HP DL585 rack mounted server Compute Nodes: 48 HP DL 145 Racks: Two 42U HP racks with fan kit and doors Power System: 4 PDUs with 32A, 220 V Giagabit Interconnects: 1 4160gl ProCurve Switches with 60 ports (71.4 million pps, 10.2 ms latency) Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, NFS, OpenPBS, Ganglia, Portland Compilers Management: Integrated Lights Out for remote text console redirection and Systems Insight Manager (OS independent)
About Progressive
Progressive Infotech (Progressive) is a leading independent provider of IT Infrastructure Services encompassing Integration and Management of IT Infrastructure, through its robust world class delivery processes to varied corporations of high repute. With an Integrated Quality Management system that comprises ISO 9001:2000, ISO 20000-1:2005 (previously BS15000-1) as well as ISO 27001:2005 (previously BS7799) standards, Progressive has redefined the way IT Infrastructure management is being practiced across the globe. Progressive Infotech Pvt Ltd C-161, Phase - II Extension, Noida - 201305 Phone: +91 - 120 - 4393939 Fax: +91 - 120 2563838
copyright © 2007