INTERCONNECTS

Voltaire today announced new solutions based on its Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) software that further improve application performance and efficiency.

UFM software is the industry’s first management software platform that provides IT managers with the tools to control and optimize performance of large server and storage scale-out fabrics. Customers can pick and choose from the new solutions to enhance UFM in ways that best support their scale-out IT infrastructure and business objectives. The first two offerings are UFM Fabric Collective Accelerator™ software and UFM Adaptive Suite software.

“Many customers do not realize the enormous potential for deep optimization in their fabrics,” said Jeff Boles, senior analyst and director of validation services with Taneja Group. “As the data center becomes increasingly virtualized and cloud-like, fabrics that are not easily optimized can create an enormous disconnect between physical networks and the fluid virtual infrastructure. We see few solutions that are as well-equipped as Voltaire’s pairing of their cutting-edge UFM software with their next generation fabrics – an end solution that helps administrators peer into the most complex fabrics, optimize those fabrics for the most challenging workloads, and keep their fabrics optimized within the ever-changing dynamic data center.”

UFM Fabric Collective Accelerator significantly reduces the runtime of MPI collective operations by up to 90% resulting in an up to 40% reduction in total MPI-based application runtime. The computational acceleration is achieved transparently without requiring changes to the application.

UFM Fabric Collective Accelerator uses the Voltaire switches to offload significant parts of the MPI collective computation in concert with algorithms that establish the optimized inter-process communication map for the application. Aside from offloading computation with the switches, the solution minimizes the amount of messages generated over the physical wires for any collective function.

The solution is enhanced with Voltaire’s OpenMPI Accelerator (OMA) software and automated through integration with the cluster job scheduler.

The UFM Adaptive Suite consists of Voltaire’s UFM software and Adaptive Computing’s Moab Adaptive HPC resource manager and advanced scheduler. This is the first and only integrated solution for managing cluster resources that span compute, I/O, network and applications.

The solution enables users to automate fabric configuration according to the application requirements and priority without manual intervention. The result is improved application runtime and higher fabric utilization, directly correlated to application priority.

Among other operations, UFM assures that the routing algorithm, network partitioning and available bandwidth and Quality of Service (QoS) are all configured according to the application and the IT policies. In addition, the solution enables automatic network isolation between applications to comply with datacenter security requirements.

“As scale-out computing environments become more complex and dynamic, it is important to select a management platform that is not only intelligent and can automate key functions, but also one that enhances application performance,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “We’re pleased to offer new innovative solutions based on our UFM software to deliver increased performance and efficiency for demanding and dynamic compute environments.”

UFM Fabric Collective Accelerator and UFM Adaptive Suite are compatible with Voltaire 20 and 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches and will be available in Q1 2010 through Voltaire partners and resellers.

More information about Voltaire UFM software is available at www.voltaire.com/UFM.