About Sun HPC Software, Developer Edition for OpenSolaris

Introduction

The Sun ^TM HPC Software, Developer Edition 1.0 for OpenSolaris product combines virtualization technology with a high performance computing platform. This combination includes tools and technologies that enable you to develop, test, and deploy high performance computing applications. It is an integrated HPC product engineering environment that is certified on the feature-rich OpenSolaris operating system. This platform, when combined with a vibrant HPC developers community and the Sun support and training services, enables you to overcome your computing challenges by creating innovative and path-breaking solutions.

The HPC engineering environment that this product provides is more than just a development environment. It includes a small, two execute-node grid that you can use to test the applications before you deploy them on real-time grids. It also supports connectivity to public computing clouds (such as Amazon's EC2), in case additional computing resources are required.

Features

The Sun HPC Software, Developer Edition 1.0 for OpenSolaris product is delivered as a single image that includes both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries. The VMware image is provided in vmx format and includes both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries with an option of booting in either mode, selectable via the GRUB menu. Similarly, the VirtualBox image is provided in ovf format, and can be booted in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode.

Note - The VirtualBox image is not available yet.

The compressed virtual machine image consists of the following software components:

• OpenSolaris 2009.06, with pre-configured zones. The zones include two local zones and a global zone to constitute a three-node configured HPC cluster.
• Sun Grid Engine 6.2u3, which is installed and configured. The global zone is configured as the Grid Engine master host, which is also a submit host. The local zones are configured as execution hosts.
• Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1, which is installed and configured.
• Sun Studio Express 06/09, which is installed and configured.
• Sun Studio IDE Plugins, which provide a close functional integration of the development environment (Sun Studio Express) and the execution environment (Sun Grid Engine).
• Examples of DTrace and performance analysis, which you can access through shortcuts available on the desktop.
• Accounting and Reporting Console (ARCo), which is installed and configured, and you can access through the shortcut available on the desktop.

The product is delivered as a DVD. The image, the documentation and the legal messages reside in the following directories:

• /Images – Contains the image files.
• /License – Contains copyright and license text files.
• /Docs – Contains the Readme HTML file and PDF document.

Figure - Sun HPC Software Architecture Diagram

Next Steps

• Old Getting Started with VMware and VirtualBox Images