There are many business and technical benefits to be gained from deploying a Linux® cluster, including an enticing price point, enhanced compute speed and robust processing. But the most alluring aspect is the emergence of a standardized, qualified Linux clustering solution that will minimize management and support complexity.
A Linux-based cluster is not a plug-in, problem-free platform. Application vendors build solutions on specific Linux flavors. Interoperability issues hit when a cluster platform doesn't match a vendor's chosen flavor, and complexity rises as more applications are laid down.
Very often, the increased maintenance and support work needed to manage the cluster ends up siphoning off the cost efficiency gained from open source technology. "For some of our customers, Linux has proven to have hidden costs related to deployment and management,” says
Barbara Hutchings, director of strategic partnerships for Fluent, a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) vendor. “It has also been a challenge to work with as a vendor, due to all the permutations and related trouble shooting needed."
Yet, despite the management headaches, Fluent saw a significant up-tick in 2005 of its installed base moving to a Linux-based clustered environment. The primary reason is that Fluent was built specifically to work in a distributed memory environment and scales extremely well on Linux clusters. The increasing customer interest in standardized high-performance computing (HPC) is why Fluent is working with HP to ensure its application meets standardized software stack requirements.
The Validation Suite and importance of the HP Message Passing Interface (MPI)
Last year HP and Novell announced a joint agreement to certify and support the SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server on HP ProLiant servers and the HP BladeSystem. A team comprised of HP, Novell and a select group of software providers built a validated solution suite for high-performance and grid computing called the Validation Suite.
The Validation Suite features the following industry-standard elements:
- EM64T
- AMD Opteron™ servers
- Novell SuSE SLES 9
- Scali Manage and MPI Connect for management needs
- Vertical compute libraries such as the MPI Library
Components within each validated stack work together to provide ease of operations.
Novell, HP, and their team of software providers have integrated and tested the components to deliver a wide range of specifically configured and verticalized stacks on Linux. Validated configuration data — including performance test results and best practices for deployment — is available from Novell, HP and the software providers with hardware and software components for each stack available from HP. The Validation Suite is complementary to the HP-developed XC software stack which is based on RedHat.
"We're pleased to work closely with HP’s technical team, and a critical component is the HP-MPI library to help ensure that the software we send out is compatible with industry-standard software stacks," says Hutchings. Fluent offers very robust support for SUSE SLES 8 and 9 and is adopting HP-MPI in the upcoming release of its software this year.
Hutchings notes that the cluster development trend of the past saw customers acquiring different compute pieces from multiple vendors. "They'd get the compute nodes from one source, an OS from another, the interconnect from another, and then struggle to assemble a working system.” Today, she says, customers are increasingly appreciative of a validated and standardized software stack with everything bundled and tested. It's likely going to be less expensive in the long run, she says.
HP, Novell and their team of software providers continue to improve and extend the Novell Validation Suite.
Information on HP’s free service to software providers and customers that are interested in working on the Validation Cluster suite.
Information on Fluent engineering solutions
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