Earth Sciences Department Replaces Rocks with Bright to Gain Time
San Jose, California — Bright Computing, the leading independent provider of cluster management software, announced Bright Cluster Manage® was selected by the Department of Earth Sciences at Syracuse University for provisioning, scheduling, monitoring and managing its HPC cluster. Assistant Professor Dr. Robert Moucha, the principal investigator, is studying the evolution of the earth’s surface through the use of fluid dynamics simulations.
“We selected Bright Cluster Manager for its intuitive interface, ease of use and responsive support,” said Dr. Moucha. “Previously we used Rocks.”
“I don’t have days to search community news sites and HPC user message boards for fixes to broken open source tools. I need something where I could get support within 24 hours,” continued Dr. Moucha. “My success is measured by my published results, and the educational experience of our students and graduate students. I am not measured on cluster management— but our cluster does have to work.”
The department’s cluster runs proprietary research applications and MATLAB on a combination of Intel® Xeon® E5 processors and NVIDIA GPUs. Dr. Moucha was attracted to the ease of managing mixed CPU and GPU environments, which he found to be far easier with Bright than with open source toolkits. “Bright makes sure you have the right drivers on the GPU and CPU nodes, so you don’t have to even think about it.” Bright’s intuitive GUI gives complete visibility to all aspects of the cluster, making it fast and easy to identify and rectify system problems.
Dr. Moucha also liked the development packages available with Bright Cluster Manager, and how easily Bright works with HPC compiler suites from The Portland Group, Intel and others.
Dr. Moucha feels a strong sense of urgency to produce results. He and the rest of Syracuse University’s Earth Sciences team keeps to a tight research schedule so it can be accountable for the National Science Foundation grant money. Using Bright to manage their cluster instead of Rocks enables Dr. Moucha to spend a lot more of his time on his research and teaching.
“I have to produce,” said Dr. Moucha. “Publishing is very important in able to secure grants. And, like most assistant professors, I’m on a tenure track. I need to meet key objectives within five years. Managing the cluster isn’t one of those objectives.”
The department’s cluster was built by Bright partner Nor-tech, a system integrator that provides significant value-add beyond building clusters tightly tuned to their customers’ requirements, including high reliability features, extensive pre-configuration and testing.
About Nor-Tech
Nor-tech is a leading system integrator with more than ten years experience providing high performance solutions to the scientific community. Nor-Tech platforms range from standalone scientific workstations to scalable high performance clusters performing large-scale research.
About Bright Computing
Bright Computing is a specialist in cluster management software and services for high-performance computing (HPC). Its flagship product — Bright Cluster Manager — with its intuitive graphical user interface and powerful cluster management shell, makes clusters of any size easy to install, use and manage, including systems combining Intel/AMD processors with GPGPU technology. Bright’s minimal footprint enables HPC systems to be utilized to their maximum potential, from departmental clusters to large-scale systems. Bright Cluster Manager is the management solution of choice for many research institutes, universities, and companies across the world, including several Top500 installations. Bright Cluster Manager is an official Intel Cluster Ready component and fully complies with the Intel® Cluster Ready specification.
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