SCIENCE

Platform Computing is making high performance computing (HPC) in cloud environments a reality for HPC data centers. The company has outlined three solutions that simplify the path to the cloud, enabling HPC customers to easily handle unpredictable workloads, take advantage of external cloud resources when internal resources are unavailable and push workloads to the external cloud based on priority and required resources.  Using Platform Computing's flexible and powerful cloud bursting solutions, HPC customers can easily implement HPC cloud environments that are optimally configured based on their requirements.

Supporting Quotes:

-- "Platform Computing's work to simplify the complex work-stream and resource provisioning to the cloud promises to give users access to the vital computing resources they need to conduct their research projects. This is particularly critical to individual developers and smaller teams who often have very large jobs that require hyper-scale computing capabilities," said Donnie Bell, Senior Manager, High Performance Computing Solutions, Dell Inc. "The ability to leverage the massive amount of instantaneous cycles within the 'cloud,' with tools uniquely optimized for that environment, is a huge leap for everyone throughout the scientific and research communities."

-- "External Cloud computing is an increasingly attractive alternative to purchasing additional infrastructure for many organizations because it offers a pay-per-use economic model and supports near instantaneous access to resources.  Successful HPC cloud implementations are dependent on an administrator's ability to automatically designate workloads to run on remote or local resources depending on business requirements.   The management features included in Platform Computing's products enable such control and seamlessly connect physical and cloud-based resources, making the path to the cloud easier," said Ken Hertzler, Vice President, Product Management, Platform Computing.

Key Points:

• HPC applications are most commonly used in fields such as aerospace and defense, education, research, electronic design automation, financial services, government, life sciences, media/digital content creation and oil and gas.  These applications have traditionally operated in computing environments using dedicated, physical servers that provide the compute, storage and network performance necessary to perform intensive computing calculations.  Until now, it was very difficult and time consuming to distribute the workload to the cloud once these physical resources reached maximum utilization.
• HPC workloads spike when computational or data-intensive projects require additional computing resources.  Business requirements often force infrastructure changes to address peak workload demands. This can be accomplished two ways: a large capital expenditure to purchase additional hardware and software (provisioning for peak workloads) or offload the excess demand to an external cloud resource (cloud burst).
• Through its cloud computing solutions, Platform Computing helps improve utilization and resource capacity while helping organizations avoid the costs and delays of large capital purchases.  The company offers three separate paths for HPC users to dynamically scale resources to handle peak workload necessary for HPC applications:
  • Solution 1: Integrated Cluster with the Cloud (Platform LSF) – Uses Platform LSF's dynamic host capabilities along with a cloud service, such as the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), to provide cloud resources that appear to operate within the HPC datacenter (local IP addresses, host names, etc.).  Platform LSF recognizes outside cloud services as valid resources and integrates the resources into the HPC infrastructure.  Workloads can then be sent to the cloud portion of the HPC infrastructure to run applications as designated by policy or on a job-by-job basis.
  • Solution 2: Multi-Cluster to the Cloud (Platform LSF with Platform MultiCluster) – Allows users to start up a new cluster in any cloud or hosting provider environment without a dedicated link such as Amazon VPC.  Used in conjunction with Platform LSF, Platform MultiCluster enables users to distribute workloads between internal HPC clusters and external cloud resources, according to policy.
  • Solution 3: Dynamic Cluster Extension to the Cloud (Platform LSF with Platform ISF) –  Combined with Platform LSF, Platform ISF creates a powerful and flexible cloud management solution that dynamically scales clusters to include resources within the data center infrastructure or externally to a cloud provider based on the application workload.  Platform ISF includes resource kits to manage physical or virtual servers, multiple operating systems, virtual machines and cloud resources.