Double-Take Flex for HPC

Double-Take Software announced the availability of Double-Take Flex for High Performance Computing (HPC), an all-in-one solution for diskless iSCSI booting for Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 storage, bootstrap and boot volume management, allowing companies to virtualise, consolidate, share, and centrally manage HPC compute node boot volumes.

Double-Take Flex for HPC extends Windows HPC Server customers’ investments in iSCSI SAN infrastructure and provides a powerful underlying iSCSI Storage Server tuned especially for sharing HPC nodes’ boot images. It is a comprehensive solution that includes all of the required technology to automate the deployment of hundreds of diskless HPC compute nodes, and includes the iSCSI Service Provider, centrally-managed back-end storage, and boot image management.

Double-Take Flex for HPC can also work with third-party iSCSI providers, helping to extend the high-end capabilities of customers’ existing SANs. On the same compute nodes, customers can use the functionalities of both Double-Take Flex and Double-Take Flex for HPC. In this scenario, a customer could provision desktops for ordinary office tasks during the day and for high performance computing at night.

Double-Take Flex Product Highlights:

• Manageability – Before Double-Take Flex for HPC, customers faced a time-intensive, costly manual process of individually provisioning each boot volume for each HPC compute node. Now customers can create and provision all boot volumes at the same time by sharing a single master boot volume to all compute nodes, while at the same allowing individual nodes to utilise individual differences.
• Flexibility – Double-Take Flex for HPC allows for easy, cost-effective re-purposing of compute nodes or additional non-HPC clients for other boot-from-SAN usage. This allows customer to provision desktops for ordinary office tasks during the day and for high performance computing at night.
• Reliability – Using hundreds of compute node disks together can be unreliable dueto moving parts, but Double-Take Flex for HPC allows users to replace these unreliable hard disks with reliable and centrally managed software-based diskless iSCSI boot capabilities.
• Costs – Consolidating disks with Double-Take Flex for HPC eases purchase, power and cooling requirements.
• Security – In some HPC environments, disks must be tightly managed. By having fewer disks, companies can significantly improve the manageability of physical disks and therefore provide a greater level of security.
• Learning Curve – Double-Take Flex for HPC puts all the pieces required for diskless HPC boot in one place with one vendor, utilising familiar PXE boot technology.

Mutlu Kurtoglu, Group Product Manager, Technical Computing, at Microsoft Corporation commented: "Windows HPC Server 2008 offers world class performance, takes advantage of existing technology investments and skills and makes supercomputing simple to manage and easy to use. Double-Take Flex for HPC brings value to customers, helping them get their work done in smart, efficient ways."

Steve Marfisi, product manager at Double-Take Software, said: "Double-Take Flex for HPC is a one-stop software solution that automates deployment of hundreds of diskless HPC compute nodes It offers customers a complete environment from which to virtualise, share, and centrally manage desktop and server boot volumes."