[torqueusers] Cluster Resources Newsletter * November 2005

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Cluster Resources Newsletter - November 2005
Optimizing your Compute Resources
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www.clusterresources.com 
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NEWS/ANNOUNCEMENTS 

1.CLUSTER RESOURCES RELEASES NEW MOAB GRID SUITE	
2.MOAB CLUSTER & GRID PRODUCTS ADDED TO HP/SUSE VALIDATION SUITE
3.CLUSTER RESOURCES RELEASES TORQUE 2.0
4.CLUSTER RESOURCES AT SC|06
5.DID YOU KNOW:INTEGRATING MOAB WITH XCAT

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CLUSTER RESOURCES RELEASES NEW MOAB GRID SUITE

Cluster Resources, Inc. released Moab Grid Suite 4.5 
this month. The new grid management, monitoring and 
reporting tool reduces barriers to enabling grid computing 
by allowing organizations to create grids on the 
environments they already have, with little to no 
adjustments, providing political sharing solutions and 
improving ease-of-use on grid environments.

"While powerful, one of the highlights of Moab Grid Suite 
4.5 is its incredible simplicity," said Dave Jackson, Cluster 
Resources' Chief Technology Officer.  "We have been doing 
grids for a number of years and have found that one of the 
greatest barriers to grid adoption is the fear associated 
with introducing an entirely new layer of software and 
complexity.  With Moab Grid Suite, these issues are effectively 
eliminated.  In many cases, a cluster can be rolled into a grid 
in a matter of seconds, with no new tools and no new training."

Moab improves ease with seamless transitioning from clusters 
to grids with its support for heterogeneous resource managers, 
operating systems, hardware and other cluster features. Moab 
makes grid management and usage easier with a virtual view of 
resources that provides information on downed, idle and active 
nodes. To improve ease for end-users Moab has a Web-based access 
portal that lets end-users remotely submit and manage jobs 
through a graphical interface. 

Moab also makes it easier for organizations to create grids 
with its political sharing policies and settings. With these 
features, organizations can manage a grid centrally while 
allowing contributors to manage their own clusters, so 
contributing organizations do not have to relinquish control 
of their computing investments.  These and many other features 
make Moab Grid Suite an industry-leading solution that will enable 
more organizations to easily evolve from cluster to grid computing.

To learn more about Moab Grid Suite and its benefits, visit 
www.clusterresources.com/grid. For product and purchasing inquiries, 
or for a free evaluation, e-mail info at clusterresources.com or call 
+1(801)873-3400. 

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MOAB CLUSTER & GRID PRODUCTS ADDED TO HP/SUSE VALIDATION 
SUITE

Cluster Resources announced the Novell SUSE Linux and HP 
hardware validation of Moab Cluster Suite and Moab Grid 
Suite through the Novell/HP Validation Program for high 
performance computing (HPC).

The SUSE Validation Suite contains a variety of HPC 
applications certified through a Validation Program 
implemented by HP and Novell. The program allows for an 
application to receive certification when it installs and 
runs seamlessly with other validation suite solutions in an 
established HPC architectural setup. Cluster Resources used 
the program to certify the integration of the Moab products 
with the other validated components. The validation further 
demonstrates Moab's heterogeneous nature and provides an 
industry leading cluster and grid workload management 
solution to HP and Novell customers.

To download an evaluation copy of Moab Cluster Suite, 
visit www.clusterresources.com/eval. The Moab products 
also run on a variety of operating systems such as other 
Linux/UNIX distributions, Mac OS X and Windows. 

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CLUSTER RESOURCES RELEASES TORQUE 2.0

Cluster Resources, Inc.TM this month released TORQUE 
Resource Manager* 2.0, an open source high performance 
computing (HPC) resource manager based on OpenPBS that 
has added over 1,200 improvements in the areas of 
scalability, usability and stability in the last 18 
months.

"TORQUE's progress is remarkable for an open source 
product," said Dave Jackson, Chief Technology Officer of 
Cluster Resources. "TORQUE has proven itself to be an 
effective and stable platform for thousands of clusters 
worldwide."

TORQUE's move to 2.0 is based on the enhanced stability 
and capabilities contributed in the last year. The 
contributed patches improve open source resource management 
in the areas of scalability, usability, scheduling 
interface and fault tolerance. TORQUE's improvements since 
the last patch include an improved start up feature for 
quick start up of downed nodes, enhanced internal diagnostics, 
simplified install, and improved API reporting abilities.

"Congratulations to everybody for making TORQUE successful," 
Jackson said. "We are still working with the community to 
improve usability, self-diagnostics, reliability and 
scalability. With these and other improvements, TORQUE will 
continue to become more intuitive and easier to use through 
joint efforts with many contributing sites."

Community members may contribute to TORQUE Resource Manager 
by e-mailing help at supercluster.org. Cluster Administrators 
may download TORQUE for their own clusters at 
www.clusterresources.com/torque. Support for TORQUE or other 
software products such as Maui Scheduler  may optionally be 
purchased from Cluster Resources at 
www.clusterresources.com/techsupport.  
 
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CLUSTER RESOURCES AT SC|06

Cluster Resources wishes to thank all of the visitors 
to our booth at SC|05. We enjoyed getting to know 
customers, partners and contributers. Cluster Resources 
presented on Cluster, Grid and Utility computing. If you 
are interested in any of these topics and will be attending 
next year's event, please e-mail info at clusterresources.com 
and let us know. We invite you to visit us again November 
2006 at SC|06 at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa Bay 
Florida. Learn more about the conference by visiting 
http://sc06.supercomputing.org/.

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DID YOU KNOW: INTEGRATING MOAB WITH XCAT

Many organizations have critical applications that 
require a custom compute environment to operate properly 
and effectively. These application requirements greatly 
limit the organization's flexibility in responding to 
dynamic changes in application workload, resource failures 
and adjustments in business priorities. Moab Cluster Suite 
can tightly integrate with IBM's xCat Cluster Management 
ToolSet to combat this problem, providing a highly optimized 
and flexible solution. Integrating Moab with xCat allows 
organizations to submit application specific tasks and 
have the application environment be adapted to those needs, 
expand cluster management functions and consolidate 
management.

Application tasks may be submitted using any of the following 
mechanisms: 
- Command line (manual) 
- Web based (manual or automatic) 
- Desktop graphical cluster management tool (manual) 
- Calendar based periodic trigger (automatic) 
- Event based trigger (automatic) 
- Load based trigger (automatic) 
- This flexibility allows organizations to initiate application 
execution based on time of day, admin need, network failures, 
external load, and a host of other factors. When a task is 
submitted, Moab first identifies compute resources which can 
best accommodate the request. Next, using xCat's architecture 
aware provisioning facilities, Moab then provisions the node 
to provide the complete required application computing 
environment.

Using Moab's industry leading quality of service, fairness 
and optimization policies, organizations better harness their 
resources and deliver on mission objectives. Leveraging xCat's 
broad architectural reach and resource management capabilities, 
Moab allows departments to bring all of their computing resources 
under a single umbrella and coordinate their use. Advanced 
accounting, reporting, and billing tools allow the organization 
to understand short and long-term workload requirements on a per 
application and per department level.
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Contact Us: 
Product Feedback, Technical Support, Consulting and Custom 
Development queries can be sent to info at clusterresources.com 
or call us at +1 (801) 873-3400

Moab Workload Manager®, Moab Cluster Manager® and Monitor®, 
and Moab Access Portal® are trademarks or registered trademarks 
of Cluster Resources IncorporatedTM.

* TORQUE Resource Manager includes software developed by NASA 
Ames Research Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 
and Veridian Information Solutions, Inc. Visit www.OpenPBS.org 
for OpenPBS software support, products, and information. TORQUE 
is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Altair Grid Solutions, 
Inc.