BESPOKE HPC SOLUTION OFFERS MORE THAN JUST INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY...

“With Windows HPC Server 2008, we feel confident that our customers will benefit from the increased productivity and reduced complexity that this product brings.”Bordan Tkachuk, CEO, Viglen Ltd.

PARTNER PROFILE

Viglen is a leading British provider of cutting edge IT solutions. Established in 1975, Viglen has built a reputation for innovation, technical expertise, and responsive partnership.

Viglen provides bespoke IT solutions to corporate, public sector, health, and education organizations in the UK.

Viglen supplies IT hardware, software, and technical support offering a totally integrated, end-to-end IT service.

OVERVIEW

High-performance computing (HPC) reduces the time it takes to complete compute intensive tasks. As a result, research can be concluded more rapidly, additional design, analysis, and testing can be performed, and the resulting products can go to market sooner. HPC can also improve overall return on IT investments, reducing pressure on IT budgets.

SITUATION

An organization’s ability to fully benefit from HPC depends on the soundness of their IT decision-making. Many mid-size organizations lack the dedicated IT resources and expertise required to:

• research and identify the optimal HPC technologies for performance price.

• leverage existing IT infrastructure and maximize return on IT investments.

• design, implement, and manage HPC clusters.

To ensure successful results, these organizations look to IT solution providers to guide their decision making and provide bespoke HPC solutions.

SOLUTION

Viglen designs and installs custom HPC cluster solutions based on Windows® HPC Server 2008.

Windows HPC Server 2008 combines the power of a 64-bit Windows Server® platform with rich, out-of-the-box functionality to help improve the productivity, and reduce the complexity, of an HPC environment.

What makes a Viglen HPC cluster different is the people working to provide a complete solution. Viglen HPC consultants work closely with customers to shape the optimum cluster. With an in-depth knowledge of current and emerging technologies, programming tools, and techniques for optimizing performance, Viglen HPC consultants can guide customers towards the blueprint for an ideal cluster.

VIGLEN HPC NODES

Quad-core processors support up to eight processing cores in a single 1U chassis.

• The Viglen HX225i utilizes the latest Intel Xeon 5400 native quad-core processors.

• The Viglen HX225a utilizes the latest AMD ‘Barcelona’ native quad-core processors.

Dual quad-core processors support up to 16 processing cores (or two nodes) in a single 1U chassis.

• The Viglen HX2220i houses quad-core Intel Xeon 5400 ‘Harpertown’ CPU’s.

• The Viglen HX2225i combines Intel Xeon 5400 CPUs with Intel’s latest 5400 ‘Seaburg’ chipset, which boast significantly larger snoop cache, and improved memory performance.

WINDOWS HPC SERVER 2008

Windows HPC Server 2008 enables broader adoption of HPC, and helps increase productivity by providing numerous end-user, administrator, and developer features and tools, including:

• End users experience a rich and integrated environment that scales easily from the desktop application to the clusters.

• Administrators can use Microsoft management tools to centrally manage the Windows Server infrastructure. Windows HPC Server 2008 includes wizards, tools, built-in management consoles, and a To Do List to simplify the provisioning of compute nodes.

Administrative groups. Administrators can also create groups based on hardware, software, or networking characteristics. Groups allow for simplified administration and allow optimal utilization by mapping jobs requirements to an appropriate set of servers.

Failover services. Windows Server 2008 Enterprise includes Failover Services. The combination of Windows Failover Services and Microsoft® SQL Server® database clustering provide head node redundancy in the event of a hardware failure.

Job scheduler. The Windows HPC Server 2008 job scheduler is multi-core aware, allowing sophisticated scheduling by core, by socket, or by server.

• Developers can use familiar development tools, such as the native parallel debugger in Microsoft Visual Studio®, to develop and troubleshoot parallel programs, including support for standard interfaces such as OpenMPI, Message Passing Interface (MPI), and Web Services.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information about Windows HPC Server 2008 and HPC, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/hpc

For more information about Viglen HPC nodes, please visit http://www.viglen.co.ukhttp://www.viglen.co.ukwww.viglen.co.uk

This data sheet is for informational purposes only. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

ARCHITECTURE

A typical Windows HPC Server 2008 architecture is shown above. The Windows HPC Server 2008 head node controls and mediates all access to the cluster resources, acts as the single point of management, deployment, and job scheduling for the cluster, and can failover to a backup head node in the case of failure.

Windows HPC Server 2008 uses the existing corporate infrastructure and Microsoft Active Directory® for security, account management, and Operations management using tools such as Systems Center Operations Manager 2007.

BENEFITS

By pre-configuring Viglen HPC clusters with Windows HPC Server 2008, Windows customers are provided with a highly scalable, secure, HPC solution that fits organization size, budget, and needs, including:

Affordable, full-featured HPC Windows HPC Server 2008 brings simple deployment, operation and IT integration to HPC at a price point that allows companies to successfully deploy HPC applications.

A single integrated system for HPC Windows HPC Server 2008 running on a Viglen HPC node provides a single integrated system that gives customers the ability to deploy, manage, schedule, and enable high-performance networking through the Microsoft Message Passing Interface (MS-MPI) stack.

Improved return on IT investments Windows-based HPC helps ensure that customers can fully utilize their existing Windows-based expertise and IT investments.

Reliable HPC hardware, software, and service. An HPC cluster based on Viglen HPC nodes running Windows HPC Server 2008 delivers the reliability that customers expect from Windows, as well as Viglen end-to-end HPC service.