HPC Resources for System Administrators

Karen Perkins, last updated on 2008-11-10

Here are some resources for High Performance Computing (HPC) products and technologies:

• Sun HPC web site, which provides links to product and services info, info tailored to HPC in specific industries (such as manufacturing, energy, and financial services), white papers, solution briefs, videos, blogs, top stories, and more

• Web sites for Sun HPC and grid computing products:

  • Sun Grid Engine web site, which includes an "intro to Sun Grid Engine" video, free Sun Grid Engine 6.2 download, and more

  • Web site for Sun HPC ClusterTools 8 Software, a toolkit that is available for download and provides a high-performance Message Passing Interface (MPI) library and parallel job launcher needed for the development, tuning, and deployment of MPI applications

  • Sun HPC Software, Linux Edition web site, which includes links to the HPC Software, Linux Edition community, the development team's blog, and the free Sun HPC Software, Linux Edition 1.0 download

  • Sun Visualization System web site, which provides info and links for Sun Visualization products, such Sun Shared Visualization software and Sun Scalable Visualization software

• Sun HPC Community Portal, a member-based web site designed for information sharing and collaboration that enables members to engage with Sun engineers, partners, and other customers in real time. Here are some recent posts:

  • Twitter test: Preview of HPC on Wall St.
  • Whitepaper: Current State of Java for HPC
  • HPC & Virtualization
  • Monitoring Your HPC Cluster

• HPC Weekly News (requires registration), a weekly newsletter that provides news and articles about Sun and Partner HPC solutions and can be tailored for your preferences and delivered as an HTML or text email

• Lustre Resources

  • Sun's Lustre File System Overview
  • Lustre Wiki

• Open source projects, such as:

  • Open MPI *, an open source implementation of the MPI standard, a software library that is widely used in the creation of parallel, distributed HPC applications
  • Project Fortress *, a new programming language designed for HPC with high programmability and intended to be a modern replacement for Fortran

• Sun Forums, where you can post questions and search for answers

• Sun training courses, available at http://www.sun.com/training/, such as:

  • High Performance Computing Programming (SL-380)
  • Sun Grid Engine Advanced Administration (ES-337)

• Documentation at http://docs.sun.com, such as:

  • Sun Customer Ready HPC Cluster documentation
  • Sun N1 Grid Engine 6 documentation
  • Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.0 documentation
  • HPC Software, Linux Edition 1.0 documentation

• Sun wikis, such as:

  • Sun HPC Software How-to Guide
  • Sun BluePrints wiki, especially the HPC BluePrints page
  • BigAdmin wiki

• Other resources, such as:

  • BigAdmin web site
  • Sun HPC Watercooler blog

• Events of interest:

  • Sun High Performance Computing Consortium (SHPCC), which is being held in Austin, Texas on November 15 through 17, 2008
  • Worldwide Developer Events and Sun Tech Days
  • Current Events