Univa UD today announced UniCloud 2.0, a major new release which includes unique capabilities for enabling private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

UniCloud 2.0 enables the formation of an elastic compute infrastructure or cloud environment that unifies provisioning, configuration and virtualization management with application configuration into a single RESTful web-services-based framework. By integrating this flexible, powerful framework with management of resources and policies, UniCloud 2.0 greatly simplifies the deployment and operation of both physical and virtual (i.e. ‘dual-mode’) compute infrastructures. As a result, users can maximize software license optimization, throughput and resource utilization.

“This solution redefines 'Moore's Law' into 'Mores Law' — as in, Get More For Less,” observes Gary Tyreman, VP and GM of Infrastructure at Univa. “Where other solutions have merely attempted to glue together various technology components for cloud settings, Univa has gone the full distance to unify and automate, then simplify, the range of capabilities needed to run applications in public or private cloud environments.”

“We’ve done the hard work, so customers don’t have to,” adds Tyreman.

The new release is groundbreaking in several respects:

• First to simultaneously manage ‘dual-mode infrastructures’ that consist of both physical and virtual resource nodes, the most common use case in a cloud scenario
• First to integrate provisioning, infrastructure configuration, application configuration, and physical and virtual resource management into a single, unified product

“UniCloud 2.0 is a leap forward for organizations of any scale that seek the flexibility and mobility that cloud computing can provide,” says Fritz Ferstl, Director Sun Grid Engine, Sun Microsystems Inc. “This is a stellar product that fully leverages the outstanding Sun Grid Engine feature set. UniCloud with SGE takes cloud computing from an intriguing concept to an immediate reality in terms of the technology, applicability, and measurable value. We are pleased to have such a key role in this groundbreaking new product.”

UniCloud 2.0 is the ideal cloud solution for a variety of real-world usage scenarios, such as high-throughput engineering organizations that are trying to optimize expensive software licenses or fair-share compute resources that require check-pointing. UniCloud is also a valuable product for small business HPC and ISV appliance manufacturers who need a cloud enablement component for their customers.

“Technical computing is a strategic enabler of the product or service development of many organizations and often underpins an organization’s competitive advantage,” says Jeff Doolan, Director Linux and Virtualization Channels at Oracle. “UniCloud extends this by enabling a greater level of efficiency, flexibility and mobility through integration with Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM.”

Simultaneous Dual-Mode Support

UniCloud 2.0 is the first cloud enablement product to operate and support simultaneous dual-mode infrastructure, instead of requiring users to choose between deploying physical or virtual compute nodes in a cloud environment. The built-in descriptive policy management ensures applications automatically use the best available mode by switching the hardware profile or live-migrating workload as required to achieve the service level objective. This means all workloads and users get the fastest possible throughput performance and the greatest possible utilization.

Simple to Use

UniCloud 2.0 provides a single construct to manage complex infrastructures and workloads using service level objectives. Workload of any type is automatically managed through integration with powerful Sun Grid Engine software. Workload requiring expensive application licenses, or meeting other prescribed priorities, can be run immediately without having to restart current jobs – check-pointing and live-migration are fully supported, so all workload finishes within a predictable amount of time. Integrated policy management enables automation by harmonizing workload, resources and hardware profiles. Changing system behavior is as simple as publishing a policy – new actions instantly become available.

Imagine the Potential

UniCloud 2.0 allows any typical cluster administrative functions to be supported in a cloud environment and also supports many capabilities that are not typical or possible with incumbent solutions such as basic check-pointing. UniCloud can dynamically add virtual or physical compute resources to the cluster infrastructure, automatically delivering real-time resource optimization based on available memory, licenses, power consumption, CPUs and even data locality. With UniCloud 2.0, users can place multiple applications safely on the same compute resource without worrying about swapping or application interference and can reduce power consumption significantly by shifting workload to less expensive data centers. “If you can think it, you can do it,” quips Tyreman.

Coverage of Top Cloud Use Cases

UniCloud 2.0 addresses these top use cases:

• Cloud Clustering: Provision an entire cluster in a public cloud
• Cloud Bursting: Add virtual compute nodes to internal clusters by provisioning nodes in a public cloud
• Private Cloud Computing: Create an internal virtual cluster that uses policies to place jobs on the most appropriate infrastructure, live-migrate or checkpoint jobs, and add virtual compute nodes by cloudbursting

UniCloud 2.0 is available as a standalone product or in an Enterprise package. Both packages include Sun Grid Engine software; the Enterprise package also includes Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Linux and a version of Reliance, Univa’s proprietary infrastructure and application service governor.