HPC Appliance Computing Goes Virtual

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Altair pioneered appliance solutions for high-performance computing with their HyperWorks Unlimited private cloud appliance, announced in September 2013. The physical appliance offers companies a fully configured hardware and software solution for computer-aided engineering (CAE) including Altair’s HyperWorks® suite and the award-winning PBS Works™ suite for HPC workload management.

Now, with Altair’s HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance, the offering goes fully into the cloud with an Amazon-hosted option that lets users get started with HPC in just minutes.

A Mission of Infinite Exploration

Our goal is to ensure users could have unrestricted access to the software they needed to explore and innovate,” said Ravi Kunju, Vice President – Strategy and Business Development. “It’s our mission to make high-performance computing (HPC) far more accessible for the CAE community and pave the path to infinite exploration, and that’s what the HyperWorks Unlimited Appliances are all about.”

The plug-and-play HyperWorks Unlimited Physical Appliance removes the effort to install, manage and maintain HPC clusters, which can be complex and challenging especially for small and medium businesses. The appliance is leased from and supported by Altair for both hardware and software.

From Physical to Virtual

The HyperWorks Unlimited Physical Appliance met with great success in its first 18 months, with users praising both the value and the ease of installation and support. According to one user, Vertu, “Altair’s HyperWorks Unlimited appliance and RADIOSS solver have offered a far more efficient means of deployment. So far we have seen up to 50 percent improvement in efficiency of processing times, and we expect this to improve further with continued use of the software. HyperWorks Unlimited offers one of the most competitively priced packages on the market.”

Stanley Black & Decker also reports “Altair proved the total value of HyperWorks Unlimited was far superior to purchasing dedicated HPC hardware or extending our existing licenses. A traditional HPC system plus a standalone solver license purchase doesn’t provide the same value.”

Now, with their recently announced HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance, Altair provides users the option to skip the onsite hardware solution and instead access a hosted cluster solution in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud. The solution essentially brings software, platform and infrastructure as a service – SaaS, PaaS and IaaS – to customers within a single and intuitive portal.

Implementing and Using the Virtual Appliance

With the HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance, users gain a single pane of glass to access all computing (hardware and software) resources through a simple web browser, configured within minutes. The solution is built on the secure, strong and highly available Infrastructure of Amazon Web Services globally, and is powered by PBS Works, Altair’s award-winning suite for powerful, reliable HPC workload management.

HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance leverages Altair’s patented pay-per-usage license model, whereby clients purchase a pool of ‘Units’ which are used to gain access to the extensive suite of HyperWorks products. The HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance provides the same benefit, with unlimited licensing on a scalable cloud platform.

Currently, HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance is being offered in North America (US, Canada and Mexico through US West and East data centers of AWS), Brazil (Sao Paolo), Japan (Tokyo), Australia (Sydney), in EMEA (through Ireland and Frankfurt), India / Korea / Malaysia / Singapore (Singapore data centers of AWS).

For more information on Altair Cloud Solutions, visit http://www.altair.com/cloud/.