Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Selects Voltaire 40Gb IB Switches and Director

Voltaire Ltd. announced that the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has selected Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches and Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) software for an HP supercomputer dedicated to cloud computing research. KIT’s new supercomputer will serve as one of the centers of excellence for Open Cirrus, an open cloud computing research testbed designed to support research into the design, provisioning and management of services at a global, multi-data center scale.

“As part of the Open Cirrus project, KIT’s new supercomputer will build and optimize cloud applications for use in data centers around the world,” said Professor Rudolf Lohner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. “We selected Voltaire’s Grid Director 4700 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches because of the high performance and extreme scalability enabled by the switch’s double-density fabric boards. 40 Gb/s bandwidth coupled with Voltaire’s UFM software helps us improve application performance and offer more efficient service delivery in our multi-tenant cloud environment.”

The HP supercomputer consists of 334 HP ProLiant DL2x170h G6 and HP ProLiant DL4x170h G6 servers based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series and is interconnected with two Voltaire Grid Director 4700 switches. The Grid Director 4700 features 324 ports of 40 Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity, with the option to double capacity to 648 ports using double-density fabric boards. The double-density fabric boards are the basis for the HyperScale architecture, a unique stackable architecture for building larger configurations into the hundreds and thousands of nodes, with lower latency and greater simplicity than alternative solutions.

To further optimize the supercomputer’s performance and simplify management of the large, multi-tenant fabric, KIT selected Voltaire’s new UFM software – the industry’s first comprehensive management software that takes a fabric-wide view of the infrastructure to optimize performance. Unlike other management software platforms that are device-oriented and involve tedious manual processes, UFM software provides IT managers with a logical view of their infrastructure. This bridges the traditional gap between servers, applications and fabric elements, creating a more effective and business-oriented way to manage and scale out high-performance fabrics – especially critical for providing cloud services.

“KIT recognizes that the dynamic nature of cloud-based services requires a high-performance, scale-out fabric that is tightly coupled with a deeply integrated management solution,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “Voltaire’s 40 Gb/s InfiniBand combined with UFM software results in a uniquely well-architected fabric that delivers top performance for KIT’s supercomputer as well as extended functionality, resource management and deep insight into total infrastructure activities for the cloud.”

“IT researchers such as KIT need maximum server performance to advance the functionality and efficiency of cloud applications and services,” said Ed Turkel, manager of business development, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure, HP. “Together with Voltaire, HP is delivering the hardware and switching infrastructure KIT needs for scale-out computing on a global level.”