An "HPC Cloud," or is it? Transtec walks us through their solution

1. 1
Michael Wirth
HPC Presales Consultant
transtec AG
An "HPC Cloud" based on
Intel hardware
June 17, 2013

2. 2
An HPC Cloud
(or is it?)
o Possible definitions include
 service models such as IaaS or SaaS
 (abstract) HPCaaS
 public or private models
 physical or virtualized deployment
 the term "HPC Cloud" is not well defined
o Customer would like an IaaS for HPC
 as a private cloud infrastructure
 with both physical and virtual deployment
 with flexible deployment of several platforms (PaaS?)
 with flexible deployment of several applications (SaaS?)
 should meet the definition of "HPC Cloud"

3. 3
HPC-Cloud
Customer's Requirements
o Customer is the Data Center of a Technical University which
 offers HPC services to institutes and faculties
 needs compute resources for dedicated projects
 needs to run a significant number of applications on both Windows
and Linux
 needs a self-service portal for registered users
 needs a very flexible, dynamic "IaaS for HPC" solution
o Situation at the customer's:
 run several Intel-based clusters already
 have a large user/group base in an LDAP/AD
 have much experience with virtualization
 have too few resources to set up dynamic HPC services for users

4. 4
o Approach 1:
 check existing cloud solutions for HPC usability
 virtualization is the critical point
 most solutions involve a massive waste of resources
o Approach 2:
 build a solution ourselves
 knowledge available, but too few developers
 not possible within the desired time frame
o Approach 3:
 use a combination of existing solution parts and adapt them
 thoroughly checked the market for suitable products
 came up with a promising solution and offered it
HPC-Cloud
solution finding process

5. 5
o HPC hardware consisting of:
 a master node with 2x Intel Xeon E5-2650
 20 standard nodes, each 2x Intel Xeon E5-2660, 64 GB RAM
 4 fat nodes, each 2x Intel Xeon E5-2670, 256 GB RAM
(Washington Pass systems)
o IaaS/PaaS/SaaS software solution stack with a mixture of
 IBM xCAT for basic cluster management and node deployment
 IBM Platform Cluster Manager Advanced Edition (PCM-AE)
 IBM Platform Application Center
 IBM Platform LSF
o Services
 transtec TecCenter Solution Engineers
 IBM Platform Solution Engineers, Developers and Supporters
HPC-Cloud
transtec offer

6. 6
o Hardware for Compute Nodes:
 transtec CALLEO SH2869 = Intel H2312WPJR
 four nodes in one 2 U chassis
 64 DIMM slots (up to 512 GB RAM per node)
 8 Intel Xeon E5-2600 CPUs (2 per node)
 12 3.5'' hot-swap hard drives (3 per node)
 redundant 1620 W PSU
HPC-Cloud
transtec solution

7. 7
HPC-Cloud
transtec solution

8. 8
o Software Solution: IBM PCM-AE/PAC/LSF:
HPC-Cloud
transtec solution

9. 9
o Software Solution: IBM PCM-AE:
HPC-Cloud
transtec solution
Platform Cluster Manager
Advanced Edition
Operational
Management
Clusters&Machines
SDK:Clusters
Self-Service
Clusters
Cluster Support
Define, Deploy, Flex HPC Clusters
Reporting
Resource Integrations
Allocation Engine
Virtualization
Adapter -
EC2 Adapter
Physical Host
Provisioning
Platform Cluster
Manager (PCM)
included
Customer
Specific
Provisioning
Adapters

10. 10
A small (non-representative) selection of software to be deployed:
HPC Cloud
Software to be integrated

11. 11
The login screen – to be branded with the Universities logo
The whole solution (RHEL and PCM-AE) can be integrated into the
University's LDAP Directory
HPC-Cloud
Implementation walkthrough

12. 12
HPC-Cloud
Implementation walkthrough
The Cockpit Machine Overview as seen by the Administrator

13. 13
HPC-Cloud
Implementation walkthrough
compute node
deployment
virtual
KVM hosts
physical
PXE boot image
KVM image
CentOS 6.3
KVM image
CentOS 6.3
Intel Dev Tools
KVM image
any Linux
KVM image
MS Windows Server
2008 R2 Datacenter
o KVM image format is QCOW2 (R/W)
o vmtools package needs to be installed in each image
o Ethernet devices are bridged (br0/br1) on the KVM host, they correspond to the
virtual devices (eth0/eth1) in the virtual machine

14. 14
HPC-Cloud
Implementation walkthrough
Cluster Definitions can be created for physical machines as well as for
virtual machines, of different types. The user creates a new cluster by
clicking "New" and selecting a pre-defined cluster type.

15. 15
HPC-Cloud
Implementation walkthrough
The cluster will now be
provisioned in the
background. The user
can follow the progress
in the Logs window.
After a few minutes,

16. 16
HPC-Cloud
Summary
Implemented Planned/Envisioned
IaaS HW and network (GbE) Infiniband infrastructure
Self-service portal for users Integration into University LDAP directory
Dynamic physical cluster deployment
Dynamic virtual cluster up to 16 cores Virtual cluster up to 128 cores
Windows & Linux PaaS More Linux distributions supported
SaaS with 4 applications SaaS with 20 applications
24 nodes (20 standard, 4 fat) Cluster extension

17. 17
HPC-Cloud
transtec solution
Thank you