Comments on: Virtualization in HPC http://insidehpc.com/2008/09/09/virtualization-in-hpc/ HPC News Without the Noise for Supercomputing Professionals | insideHPC Sun, 19 May 2013 10:46:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: John West http://insidehpc.com/2008/09/09/virtualization-in-hpc/#comment-91803 John West Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:59:30 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=2200#comment-91803 In my own defense, Rich, I've never run an IBM. With the pointy haired boss comment, just felt a need to defend myself! :-) But you make a good point. I guess perhaps Sun's partitioning scheme uses a similar approach (that's a question/statement). In my own defense, Rich, I’ve never run an IBM. With the pointy haired boss comment, just felt a need to defend myself! :-)

But you make a good point. I guess perhaps Sun’s partitioning scheme uses a similar approach (that’s a question/statement).

]]> By: Rich http://insidehpc.com/2008/09/09/virtualization-in-hpc/#comment-91718 Rich Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:44:28 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=2200#comment-91718 One thing to keep in mind is that if you've used an IBM with a Federation Switch, you've been using virtualization and probably didn't even know it. The Power4, Power5, Power6, and soon to be Power7 ALL use VM's. IBM calls them partitions, or LPAR's, Logical Partitions, and they are controlled by a hypervisor. As far as I can tell, it's exactly the same as doing a Virtual Machine, but, and remember I no longer work for them, IBM does a heck of a lot better job of making it transparent that any other company I have seen. In fact I don't think there is a company out there that comes close. They took most of the ideas and technology from the mainframes and ported it to the servers. Need a web server farm, or database farm, etc? Just set up a bunch of Dynamic LPAR's in a P6 maching and it can automagically move memory and processors between partitions/VM's to balance workload. Need more servers than you have processors? No problem, you can split processors, network adapters, etc between VM's, it's called micropartitioning. Etc etc etc. So, to say we don't use VM in HPC isn't really correct. We do, you probably just didn't realize it. Which is as it should be. (And yes John, that was a dig at being a pointy haired boss) (-: Rich One thing to keep in mind is that if you’ve used an IBM with a Federation Switch, you’ve been using virtualization and probably didn’t even know it. The Power4, Power5, Power6, and soon to be Power7 ALL use VM’s.

IBM calls them partitions, or LPAR’s, Logical Partitions, and they are controlled by a hypervisor. As far as I can tell, it’s exactly the same as doing a Virtual Machine, but, and remember I no longer work for them, IBM does a heck of a lot better job of making it transparent that any other company I have seen. In fact I don’t think there is a company out there that comes close. They took most of the ideas and technology from the mainframes and ported it to the servers.

Need a web server farm, or database farm, etc? Just set up a bunch of Dynamic LPAR’s in a P6 maching and it can automagically move memory and processors between partitions/VM’s to balance workload. Need more servers than you have processors? No problem, you can split processors, network adapters, etc between VM’s, it’s called micropartitioning. Etc etc etc.

So, to say we don’t use VM in HPC isn’t really correct. We do, you probably just didn’t realize it. Which is as it should be.
(And yes John, that was a dig at being a pointy haired boss)

(-:

Rich

]]> By: Chris Vaughan http://insidehpc.com/2008/09/09/virtualization-in-hpc/#comment-91549 Chris Vaughan Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:57:09 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=2200#comment-91549 From what I've seen there is demand for virtualization in HPC, especially when people are considering mixing WinHPC Server 2008 and Linux/Unix where they don't want to over dedicate their cluster to one OS. This is because it's faster to provision a VM than by other methods like dual boot or PXE. Some of the main concerns for adoption that I've seen is that there is limited support for mpi & infiband drivers within VM's. Other concerns are whether parallel codes can cope with some of the nicer features of VM's such as checkpointing and migrating. Where virtualization can be a player is in environments where they run serial jobs and can get by with ethernet. Then there is the greatest argument of why not to use VMWare and that is the slight performance decrease in running within a VM. These arguments are for HPC clusters and do not hold true in traditional data centers. From what I’ve seen there is demand for virtualization in HPC, especially when people are considering mixing WinHPC Server 2008 and Linux/Unix where they don’t want to over dedicate their cluster to one OS. This is because it’s faster to provision a VM than by other methods like dual boot or PXE. Some of the main concerns for adoption that I’ve seen is that there is limited support for mpi & infiband drivers within VM’s. Other concerns are whether parallel codes can cope with some of the nicer features of VM’s such as checkpointing and migrating. Where virtualization can be a player is in environments where they run serial jobs and can get by with ethernet. Then there is the greatest argument of why not to use VMWare and that is the slight performance decrease in running within a VM.

These arguments are for HPC clusters and do not hold true in traditional data centers.

]]>