APPLICATIONS

Cluster Resources, Inc. today announced the release of Moab Cluster Suite 4.2 for Mac OS X. It is the first release of Cluster Resources' cluster management suite to support the Mac OS X platform and includes: Moab Workload Manager, a policy-based workload management and scheduling engine; Moab Cluster Manager, a graphical cluster administration interface, monitor, and reporting tool; and Moab Access Portal, an end-user job submission and management portal. Moab Cluster Suite 4.2 also supports Linux and Unix-based server platforms and Mac OS X, Linux, Unix and Windows clients. Mac OS X and Apple Computer's Xserve hardware continue to see growing success in the High performance computing market with the much publicized success of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's (Virginia Tech) supercomputer and other leading deployments. High Performance Computing sites are now able to leverage Apple Computer's renowned ease of use and superior price performance with Cluster Resources' cluster management solutions to achieve new levels of control and efficiency. “Moab Workload Manager on Mac OS X allows for the management of traditional compute resources, as well as storage, network and licenses. This provides organizations with unparalleled control over how, when and by whom the resources of a cluster are accessed delivering up to 90 to 99 percent utilization.” said David Jackson, Chief Technology Officer of Cluster Resources, Inc. “The Web and desktop GUI interfaces empower administrators with significant management capabilities and enable end-users to submit their own jobs and self-manage their use of the system.” "With dual G5 processing power and up to 8GB of ECC memory, Xserve G5 is affordable, easy to manage and easy to cluster making it the perfect platform for high performance computing,” said Ron Okamoto, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “Moab Cluster Suite 4.2 delivers a powerful management suite for complex computational clustering to our customers who benefit from the strong performance of Mac OS X and Xserve G5 servers." One of the notable sites leading Mac OS X adoption in the cluster and grid space is Virginia Tech. Its System X cluster landed at number three on the Top500 list in November of 2003 and was recently upgraded to an Xserve G5 based cluster. “We achieved the underlying power required to be near the head of the Top500, and now with the Moab Cluster Suite we have the management and reporting we need to truly harness and control our powerful system,” said Kevin Shinpaugh, Director of Research and Cluster Computing of Virginia Tech. “Accounting for and allocating the millions of CPU hours available per year on System X is much easier now that we have Moab Cluster Suite. The reporting tools of Moab Cluster Manager clearly show us what has been done and Moab Workload Manager lets us express and enforce our rules.” The Moab suite provides Mac OS X sites with an easy cross-over into the supercomputing arena, as users can engage in high performance computing without wasting time learning to maneuver through a difficult interface. “Advanced and highly configurable workload management capabilities are essential for our computational science and engineering HPC environment,” said Michael Campbell, HPC Software Administrator at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). “We have multiple clusters, several hundred users and many research groups that span various departments and universities. This diverse user base ranges from individuals doing thesis work, to class projects, to huge production simulations requiring thousands of processors. The Moab suite provides a means by which these complex needs and changing priorities can be managed relatively easily from a single point of control.” The Moab Cluster Suite can be used to enforce service level delivery to users, groups, projects or organizational units. Moab's service level enforcement can ensure the right resources are delivered and that response times are optimized. Reports can be generated to accurately monitor usage and can be used for cost sharing or bill-back purposes, using either virtual credits or actual financial charges. “We wanted to enhance our cluster management as it was quite challenging to coordinate all the different applications, research groups and desired policy settings,” said David Osguthorpe, Director of Computational Biology of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. “Moab Workload Manager lets us set up global, cluster and user based rules and policies and automate them across the entire cluster. Our system is certainly more efficient now and we can give our users a better experience. That means more research gets done, our grant providers will be more pleased and we are better prepared to grow our system and the work that can be accomplished.” The Moab Cluster Suite 4.2 is available for immediate release. Organizations interested in a free evaluation copy of Moab Cluster Suite or access to Cluster Resources' On-line Demonstration Cluster can visit www.clusterresources.com/products/eval.