SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing

High performance computing breaks new ground

High Performance Computing (HPC) is used to solve the most demanding computational and data-intensive problems. Due to the evolution of both lower cost hardware and enterprise class Linux distributions, the HPC market is rapidly changing, away from RISC/UNIX symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) servers and proprietary cluster platforms toward Linux industry standard servers and clusters. Linux has become the cluster operating system of choice, thanks to its scalability and performance capabilities, its similarity to UNIX, and the wide variety of open-source software and development tools available.

This evolution has allowed the cost of high performance computing systems to be dramatically reduced, and with compute power increasing a thousand times in just a few years, many more companies can now utilize the power of "supercomputers" in the form of an HPC Linux cluster. Technical computing decision makers are finding themselves faced with tremendous pressure to reduce server floor space usage and more effectively manage the organization's insatiable appetite for increased performance, new and improved services, and enhanced productivity. HPC Linux clusters are an ideal solution to these challenges.

In addition to the traditional HPC applications and workloads run by technical computing groups, there has been increasing adoption of HPC among commercial customers for applications such as financial analysis and portfolio management, digital security and surveillance, as well as decision support computing. HPC systems are now being utilized for business uses, such as data warehouses, line-of-business (LOB) applications and transaction processing. And while HPC has been primarily limited to large enterprises, R&D firms, and academic institutions in the past, there is now also a broad swath of mid-market companies adopting HPC due to the availability of affordable and open solutions, supplanting the costly and proprietary solutions of the past. All of these factors are contributing to a logical progression: HPC is maturing from "high performance" to "high productivity."

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server – best choice for High Performance Computing

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is synonymous with high-performance Linux running on 64-bit and mainframe systems. Since 1993, SUSE engineers have made significant contributions to the advancement and tuning of the Linux kernel and key kernel-related performance technologies.

Today, multi-core processors are setting the stage for new market dynamics in High Performance Computing. That's why enterprises worldwide are investing in high performance computing and turning to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as their preferred operating system in this area. With advanced memory management, new processor support, unmatched performance on systems with multicore processors, Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL) and advanced multi-pathing and I/O capabilities, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 beats RISC/UNIX systems in performance and scalability for large-scale server deployments on commodity blades and servers as well as high-end mainframes.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 has been designed to handle mission-critical workloads in the data center. It ships with file systems perfectly suited for large scale environments, such as XFS which is a high-performance journaling file system, and Oracle Cluster File System 2 (OCFS2) which has been designed to host larger files in a clustered environment. By integrating Heartbeat v2, the open source multinode high-availability solution, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 is built for mission-critical use and minimal downtime, maximizing the probability that systems will remain up and running.

By looking at the Top500.org web site you can see that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the operating system of choice on the worlds largest HPC "super computers" in use today. Of the Top 500 supercomputers, more than 85% are running on Linux. And six out of the top 10 are running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server!

To learn more, read the white paper SUSE Linux Enterprise in High Performance Computing

The Importance of Interoperability

In many organizations, the boundaries between HPC and enterprise IT organizations have all but disappeared. HPC systems, ranging from a few nodes to clusters boasting thousands of processors, must now operate within the same environments that measure not only performance, but also reliability, support, total cost of ownership and productivity.

Leading edge HPC groups and enterprise IT organizations have converged on the same path—one that is leading them to the data center of the future. This data center includes a diverse yet interoperable platform environment—with a true coexistence of proprietary and open systems. Key applications may dictate platform and architecture requirements and force organizations to maintain both proprietary and open source HPC environments. Interoperability in an HPC environment is critical to reducing costs, future-proofing HPC infrastructure investments and improving productivity.Novell and Microsoft are bringing unparalleled productivity to mixed HPC cluster environments through Linux and Windows interoperability.

Microsoft and Novell have addressed the needs for interoperability within HPC by offering a dual-boot solution that combines SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (WCCS). Because HPC clusters represent a significant investment of resources, maximizing the benefits of existing assets can result in huge savings. With a dual-boot capability—using the same cluster for two operating systems—users gain the flexibility of an additional cluster without having to invest in further hardware.

Read the setup and configuration guide: "Dual Boot: Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10"

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