high-performance computing
mechanical things that you might need to do with your cluster,’ Carter added.
Opening the door to new technology At Bright Computing cluster management soſtware and HPC has been at the heart of the business since its inception, when the company was created to commercially support the cluster management solutions supplied alongside ClusterVision, a HPC systems integrator. ‘In the early days it was predominantly
academics in the university space, so we have hundreds of university customers all over the planet. A lot of them are here in the UK such as Leicester, the University of Sussex, Greenwich – and a lot of universities have made a commitment to Bright,’ stated Carter. Over this time the company has seen the
convergence of other computing paradigms including big data, OpenStack and deep learning, leveraging its expertise to create a single hybrid platform that spans across all of these technologies managed through the same core soſtware that Bright has developed over many years. ‘Te way that we deliver OpenStack and
Deep learning is on the base foundation of Bright, so you don’t have to throw anything away; you don’t have to build a new infrastructure. Subject to licensing for the big data or the OpenStack piece, you just have to turn it on,’ said Carter. ‘Tat is really what we are all about –
because, regardless of whether you are an academic, government or a commercial customer, you are not trying to figure out how to setup OpenStack. You are trying to figure out how to leverage OpenStack to better service your users and your business.’ Carter gave an example of the UK Met
companies may want to set up an open- source solution to limit the financial investment needed to get the system up and running. However this cost is now paid in the time of experts that could be better utilised in other areas, as an open-source solution does not provide the support or maintenance that you get with a comparable commercial soſtware package. ‘We find universally, across all of the
sectors that we work in, that our clients come back to us and say that they can do more with less people,’ commented Carter. ‘We hear time and time again that we have
enabled a lean IT organisation to take on additional tasks because we have automated and taken away some of the mundane
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Office, which is using a hybrid clustered environment to support the physical cluster with smaller virtualised environments that could be used for application development or testing. Tese virtualised environments, while not offering the same performance as the ‘bare metal’ physical cluster, give users more agility as soſtware engineers can set up dynamic virtual environments separate to the main cluster to accelerate application development. ‘It is an example of a mini supercomputer
servicing a humongous supercomputer. Te main system at the Met Office is a multi- petaflop system with millions of pounds worth of investment,’ stated Carter. ‘We find that happening with a lot of our customers; they want to employ a more innovative, agile platform to do these things because at
the end of that day they are trying to get the maximum return on the investment they have made in a system.’ However, this is not the only way the
traditional HPC users are using OpenStack to accentuate their computing infrastructure. Carter gave a second example of a large engineering company that is using Bright
THE WAY THAT WE DELIVER OPENSTACK AND DEEP LEARNING IS ON THE BASE FOUNDATION OF BRIGHT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO THROW ANYTHING AWAY YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUILD A NEW INFRASTRUCTURE
soſtware to limit the number of personnel needed to support the computing needs of the company. ‘Tey started off as an HPC customer but
now they use Bright for big data, Bright for OpenStack, and they use Bright for HPC and they do it over multiple clusters,’ explained Carter. Carter stated that this is due largely because
of the graphical user interface that Bright provides to support their soſtware. ‘Tey have only got three people who run hundreds of nodes for this commercial organisation. Tey see the value in Bright because they can manage the entire infrastructure with a very small team,’ Carter added.
Turnkey solutions for cluster management In March 2017 the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia began using Bright Cluster Manager to support a new HPC cluster. Te 30-node cluster supports bioinformatics initiatives for Fox Chase’s cancer research programs. Debbie Willbanks, senior partner at Data in Science Technologies, who manage the cluster for the centre, explained that they choose the Bright soſtware solution because of the functionality and ease of use providing by the comprehensive GUI. ‘We evaluated many cluster management
tools and Bright was the obvious choice, especially since Fox Chase was transitioning from two different Linux systems,’ said Willbanks. ‘Activities that are difficult in other cluster
management tools are easy with Bright, providing a turnkey solution for cluster
APRIL/MAY 2017 5 ➤
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