Grid.org Launches Open HPC Management Interoperability Project

Collaboration Includes HPC Heavyweight Sun Microsystems

Lisle, IL, July 21, 2008 — Univa, a pioneer in HPC systems management products for the complete distributed computing lifecycle today announced the launch of the Open HPC Management Interoperability Project on its open source community site, Grid.org. A collaboration with Sun Microsystems, BioTeam Inc., Grid Gateway, and Runtime Design Automation, the open source project's primary goal is to simplify the challenges of managing HPC Systems and to reduce the associated costs.

"Many interoperability initiatives have been designed to enable applications to run out of the box, but there are several aspects of HPC systems that have yet to standardize," said Gary Tyreman, vice president and general manager of HPC for Univa. "These non-standard aspects impact how effectively a system administrator integrates and manages the system. With this project, Univa continues its leadership by working with industry partners to drive standards intended to remove business costs associated with vendor lock-in."

When HPC system elements, for example Distributed Resource Management (DRM) systems, are not standardized, organizations experience increased overhead and complexity in their HPC environments. The results include reduced flexibility in migration and the introduction of significant costs and barriers associated with maintaining code and wrappers that are written around a DRM.

The Open HPC Management Interoperability Project (OHMI) is focused on creating separation between job submission, operations management and resource management environments by building a reference implementation that unifies existing standards, best practice recipes and migration tools. As a result, the OHMI project will enable HPC management interoperability with minimal pain and expense by providing a consistent management experience regardless of which DRM system is being used. This creates flexibility and independence, allowing organizations to reduce non-essential development and management costs and to focus instead on solutions that solve important business problems.

"Sun is a significant contributor and supporter of standardization," said Fritz Ferstl, Director of Grid and High Performance Computing engineering at Sun Microsystems. "This project, with increased industry support, will result in a great improvement in our customers' ease of implementing and managing their cluster environments."

"The most pressing issue for implementations of HPC today is the need to moderate operating expenses without sacrificing capacity and growth," Gartner Inc. Vice President and Distinguished Analyst Carl Claunch said.

Univa's Tyreman further states that, "Managers seeking to increase the effectiveness of HPC environments will benefit from solutions like OHMI that significantly reduce the amount of customized systems integration work."

The Open HPC Management Interoperability Project is open to all organizations interested in participating in the development and standardization of basic HPC components and the codification of best practices into a repeatable and predictable product. The Project will be maintained on Grid.org (www.grid.org), the online community for open source cluster and grid software users, administrators and developers. The mission of the site is to provide a single location where open source cluster and grid information can be aggregated so that individuals with a similar range of interests can easily exchange information, experiences and ideas related to the complete open source cluster software stack.

Information about participation is available at www.grid.org. Initial participants include BioTeam Inc., Grid Gateway, Sun, Runtime Design Automation and Univa. Technology developed under this agreement will be publicly available and will be incorporated into Univa's UniCluster family.

About Grid.org

Grid.org is an open source community where cluster and grid users, developers, and administrators come to connect and communicate, exchange information and ideas, and participate in development projects. Home to the UniCluster open source project as well as other open source projects and communities, the Grid.org mission is to provide an all-inclusive destination for people with similar cluster and grid interests. For more information, go to www.grid.org.

About Univa

Univa is the leading provider of HPC systems management and data center automation software. Univa products simplify the complex nature of deploying and operating HPC and data center virtualization environments, saving customers time and resources while giving them confidence that their solution will perform as expected. Hundreds of market-leading companies come to Univa to build and operate their production infrastructures, from workgroup clusters to enterprise grids to dynamic data center application provisioning. With a focus on making business easier for our customers, Univa is advancing the vision and practice of HPC and data center virtualization. Visit us at www.univaud.com.