HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING LABORATORY

Welcome to our innovative High Performance Computing (HPC) Laboratory which has been established to share the latest server and storage technologies with customers, prospective users, independent software vendor (ISV) partners, IT associates and technical colleagues.

The HPC Lab has been developed to help determine requirements, verify solution design and invest in the right equipment, software, applications and skills. The HPC Lab provides a secure environment for:

Proof-of-Concept
Benchmarking
Software & Data Porting
Testing Existing and Emerging Technologies
Technical Support
Demonstrations
Knowledge Transfer/Training
Hands-on Familiarisation
Project Roll-Out Assistance
Back-up and Standby

The facilities of the HPC Lab are aimed at users of UNIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows and OpenVMS operating system environments.

Considerable computational power is delivered by a combination of latest revision 64-bit HP Integrity servers based on Intel Itanium 2 microprocessor, enterprise and departmental class 64-bit HP AlphaServer and ultra dense 32-bit Proliant BL p-Class (Intel Xeon) and e-Class (Intel Pentium M) server blades.

Storage of around 1.1 terabytes capacity is available from Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and server-attached subsystems. Core storage is based upon HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) which is the newest generation of StorageWorks Disk Array family enabled by VersaStor technology. EVA is a “virtual” RAID (Vraid) storage solution offering ultra-high performance, capacity, flexibility and availability.

An adaptive enterprise needs to embrace emerging technologies to stay ahead of competition. To this end, the HP StorageWorks SR2122 iSCSI Storage Router, an iSCSI to Fibre Channel bridge, extends access block storage on a Fibre Channel SAN across the Ethernet network.

Networking is provided by a secure, high-speed Layer 3/4 switched LAN with wireless technology links if required. Remote access via the Internet and ISDN links are both available.

Back-up is via an industry standard , super DLT tape library.

Considerable flexibility exists for system configuration to meet deployment needs.

An extensive library of layered software by way of language compilers etc is available for access if required.

Use of the computing resources of the HPC Lab is generally available free of charge, dependent upon scale and period of utilisation.