Clustercorp Announces Rocks+Hybrid

clustercorpClustercorp, today, announced a new addition to their Rocks cluster portfolio. Rocks+Hybrid, as its called, utilizes the core Rocks cluster toolkit and extends functionality to allow customers to dual boot both Rocks clusters and Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters. Typically, dual boot clusters were very time consuming to setup. However, as more vendors begin to ship clusters certified to run both Linux-based cluster management tools and Windows HPC Server, the need for a dual-boot solution becomes apparent.

Rocks has a long history of demonstrating leadership in the HPC cluster management space and Microsoft is pleased to have worked with Clustercorp to bring Windows HPC Server 2008 together with Rocks+,” said Vince Mendillo, Sr. Director, High Performance Computing Marketing at Microsoft. “With this offering, the Rocks community now has a simpler and more automated way to implement powerful clustering capabilities using Windows HPC Server 2008, while also receiving the familiar ease-of-use and cost efficiency benefits of Windows.”

Clustercorp is thrilled to add Rocks+Hybrid to our line of Rocks+ products,” said Tim McIntire, President and Co-Founder of Clustercorp. “It was extremely important for Clustercorp to retain the design foundations of Rocks in this solution – Rocks+ has always been known for making clusters easy to manage and maintain – hybrid cluster users can now experience this first-hand.”

In a hybrid environment, the Rocks+ head node provides the same services as in a homogeneous Rocks+ environment.  Newly discovered compute nodes can now automatically install both the Windows and Linux compute node images on first boot.  Rocks+ allows system administrators to modify and manage both the Linux and Windows stack at any time during operation.

Make sure you stop by the Clustercorp booth at SC09 [booth 238] for more info.  Until then, check out the Clustercorp website here.