Rocks Clustering Toolkit combined with CompaqSan Diego 09 July 2001 The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and Compaq Computer Corporation will provide an industry-standard, high-performance computing platform based on the easy-to-use open-source NPACI Rocks Clustering Toolkit from SDSC and Compaq's ProLiant line of servers.
The Compaq-SDSC alliance will enable the easy and confident deployment of
high-performance clusters with Compaq's hardware support and the
cluster management from the NPACI Rocks system with
advanced recovery capability for cluster node failures. These
clusters will provide the most stringent
computing needs for the academic, research, and technical markets as well as
offer a stable, supported, standardized platform for the increasing demands
from financial, multimedia, and data-serving markets.
SDSC and partners at the University of California, Berkeley, have created
the NPACI Rocks environment http://rocks.npaci.edu/), based on the Red Hat
Linux 7.1, specifically for
clustering to enable the installation, configuration, and optimization of
clustered Compaq servers. Customers can expect a reliable integrated
turnkey solution for high-performance computing needs with increased
performance, streamlined administration, and simplified scalability.
"The Rocks software allows us to transfer SDSC's 16 years' experience
operating the world's most powerful computing environments to groups
interested in managing their own Linux clusters," said Fran Berman, director
of SDSC and NPACI. "The impact to discoveries in science and advances in
other computationally demanding areas will be dramatic as even more research
is conducted on locally managed high-performance resources. This transfer of
expertise through partnership with Compaq is an important example of how NSF
support for development of information technology yields significant
scientific and economic benefit."
The NPACI Rocks management software from SDSC adds functionality to the base
Linux distribution without specific kernel hooks. This general approach
allows Rocks to handle the natural evolution of Linux updates more
effectively than other offerings in the marketplace. The Rocks Toolkit
provides a stable, standard, supported platform for the deployment of
advanced clustering applications. It enhances the Linux cluster environment
with features that allow users to start, observe, and control processes on
cluster nodes from the cluster's front-end computer while supporting
standard Linux interfaces and tools. The result is a stable and extensible
environment that appeals to both end users and software developers.
Ad Emmen |
 |