Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Picks Voltaire's Solutions for Cloud Computing Research

Voltaire Ltd., a provider of scale-out data center fabrics, announced that Karlsruhe Institute of technology (KIT) has selected its 40 Gbps InfiniBand switches and Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) software for an HP supercomputer which is dedicated to cloud computing research.

 

KIT’s super computer is expected to serve as one of the centers of excellence for Open Cirrus. This is an open cloud computing research testbed designed specially to conduct research in the fields of design, provisioning and management of services at a global, multi-data center scale, explained the company.

 

 “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 Gbps InfiniBand switches because of the high performance and extreme scalability enabled by the switch’s double-density fabric boards. 40 Gbps bandwidth coupled with Voltaire’s UFM software helps us improve application performance and offer more efficient service delivery in our multi-tenant cloud environment,” added the Professor.

 

The HP super computer includes a 334 HP ProLiant DL2x170h G6 and HP ProLiant DL4x170h G6 servers based on the Intel (News - Alert) Xeon processor 5500 series. It is interconnected with two Voltaire Grid Director 4700 switches. The Grid Director 4700 has 324 ports of 40 Gbps InfiniBand connectivity. There is an option to double the capacity to 648 ports using double-density fabric boards.

 

These double-density fabric boards form the basis of the HyperScale architecture. This is a stackable architecture used for building large configurations with hundreds and thousands of nodes exhibiting low latency.

 

KIT chose Voltaire’s new UFM software for enhancing and simplifying the management of the large, multi-tenant fabric. This comprehensive management software adopts a fabric-view of the infrastructure for optimizing the performance, said Voltaire.

 

Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing at Voltaire, said that KIT knows that cloud-based services are dynamic in nature which require a high-performance, scale-out fabric which incorporate a deeply integrated management solution.

 

“Voltaire’s 40 Gbps 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,” said Somekh.

 

Voltaire specializes in scale-out computing fabrics required in data centers, computing and cloud environments. Its server and storage fabric switches and advanced management software help increase the efficiency of mission-critical applications.