Cluster Computing:

INEEL, SUN TO BALANCE SECURITY, COLLABORATION w/ CLUSTER
by Tim Curns, Editor

The Department of Energy and Sun Microsystems Inc announced the development of a high performance computer cluster at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The solution includes more than 230 Sun Fire V20z servers powered by AMD Opteron processors, and more than 12TB of Sun StorEdge 6320 storage, the Solaris 9 Operating System, Sun Java Enterprise System and Java development software, Sun Grid Engine Enterprise Edition, Sun's StarOffice 7.0 office productivity platform, as well as advanced on-site training and support from Sun's Services division. The cluster's full-throttle computing power ranks the INEEL datacenter as one of the world's top 150 supercomputing sites.

"This agreement will vault INEEL into a position among the world's top high performance computing sites and offers the ability to complete two trillion floating-point operations in a one-second heartbeat," said Bill Magwood, Director of Nuclear Energy, Department of Energy. "Sun's Grid computing cluster will provide our professionals the computing resources they need for next-generation nuclear reactor design."

Sun's Solaris-based Grid computing cluster solution dramatically advances the compute power for Idaho's national laboratory and will enable INEEL professionals to directly support the engineering resources needed on a very large scale for the design of the Department of Energy's Generation IV nuclear reactors. This capability is essential in the demanding collaboration environment required among the 11 partners contributing to Generation IV design efforts.

Balancing security and collaboration is a crucial part of the deal. A user in Paris, for example, will be able to use a portal to connect through the Grid service to classified information. Yet only certain information will be available to certain users. Making sure classified information is not accessed by intruders is of the greatest importance. Yet the idea of collaboration is what makes the project so significant.

"Of particular interest with this deal is the upcoming release of Sun's Solaris 10 operating system and the security advances it offers through 'Zones and Containers,'" said Dan Wickard, INEEL's Chief Technology Officer. "One particular research project, NE Grid, which is Contractor Funded Research and Development, is geared toward creation of a collaboration environment that will facilitate International Collaboration such as well be required under the Generation IV Nuclear Program, and bioinformatics."

"The days of expensive mainframes spread across acres of facilities are behind us, as leading labs like INEEL show the way to supercomputing prowess built on ready-to-deploy, industry-standard Sun Fire servers running the Solaris OS," said Clark Masters, executive vice president of global government office at Sun Microsystems. "Sun's leadership in high performance computing is rooted in a long history of innovative designs and technologies aimed squarely as this market. Our military-grade Solaris operating system running on industry standard platforms, combined with Sun's market-leading Grid computing management tools, provide an open, unbeatable platform for price and flexibility."

INEEL Laboratory Director Paul Kearns said, "This computer enhancement is part of our longer-term plan of increasing the Laboratory's computer capabilities to support the collaboration with our Generation IV partners. We are combining this lease with $543,000 of funding from Bechtel's Corporate Funded Research and Development program to develop a collaborative engineering and research model as a key part of the Generation IV research. It also will support research and development efforts in all areas of our multi-program national laboratory, including energy, national security, environment and other key technologies."

The Solaris-based Grid computing cluster solution was financed through the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule provided through Sun Microsystems Finance. The GSA allows government customers such as the DOE and INEEL to finance Sun solutions with a convenient monthly payment plan that requires no negotiation. The total value of the INEEL solution is $1.97 million over 3-years.

Wickard further explained the difference between Grid computing differs from traditional computing clusters. "It allows for computer equipment that is not collocated to work in consort on the same research in near real-time, rather than having all the computing equipment or cluster located at a central location," said Wickard. "Specifically, we are interested in being able to advance and promote the collaboration aspects of research by taking advantage of not just own HPC cluster - but being able to leverage other resources on the 'grid' that our located outside of the INEEL toward the research problems as well."

The Generation IV nuclear energy systems initiative was started by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology which engaged governments, industry, and research communities worldwide to develop the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), a group whose member countries-Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Euratom, France, Japan, Republic of South Africa, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States-are interested in jointly defining the future of nuclear energy research and development.

INEEL selected Sun cluster based on a number of factors. "The Lab currently has an installed base of Sun equipment - which leverages our operating team's knowledge toward supporting the new systems, as well as well established working relationships with Sun technical and support staff," said Wickard. "INEEL has developed a working relationship with Sun staff over several years and existing hardware operations and support on the Business as well as the Science and Engineering sides of the Lab."

About INEEL

In operation since 1949, the INEEL is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's missions in energy, environment, science and national security. It is operated by Bechtel BWXT for the Department of Energy and for more information visit http://www.inel.gov.

About Sun Microsystems Inc

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems Inc.to its position as a provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com/.