Microsoft and Platform supercharge the HPC cluster!

It’s no secret that time is money, and designers, engineers and product analysts need to design, prototype and deliver products to market faster in order to meet shrinking product lifecycles and be competitive. To date, the obvious solution has been to do more and larger simulations that can create and even test parts prior to any metal being machined. Increased model sizes and the need for reduced run times has led many design teams to purchase and deploy several high performance computing (HPC) clusters for the muscle required to power their much needed solutions.

The challenge of this obvious solution is that the applications selected by design teams for complex simulations--which can include mechanical analysis, thermal modeling, rendering and fluid flow--are not always optimized for the same operating systems. This has led many enterprises to deploy multiple HPC clusters—one for each operating system—to allow users to run different applications, resulting in cluster silos and underutilized capacity. Design teams need a cluster that can dynamically switch between Windows and Linux, depending upon workload, and Platform Adaptive Cluster is what design teams can use to deploy a hybrid Windows/Linux HPC cluster.

A hybrid Windows/Linux cluster also cuts cost. Since the cluster can support both Linux and Windows less hardware needs to be purchased, and Platform Adaptive Cluster also increases effective application performance by allowing applications to access the capacity of the entire cluster. Cluster silos are eliminated and cluster resources are maximized.

Earlier this week, Microsoft made some waves in the HPC market by with the release of its much-awaited Windows HPC Server 2008 R2. When Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 release is used in combination with Platform Adaptive Cluster, HPC designers, engineers and product analysts can optimally coordinate the management of their HPC environment and workloads.

What’s great about the new Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 is that it integrates well with all the leading HPC solutions such as Dell, Cray, and Platform, allowing lots of collaboration and performance improvements across an enterprise’s HPC solution portfolio. With the Platform-Microsoft solution, enterprises no longer need to deploy separate HPC clusters to accommodate different operating systems, making it easier and more cost effective to deploy and use hybrid Windows and Linux clusters. The net result of the Platform-Microsoft solution is that design teams can better leverage technology in their quest to deliver better products to market faster.