RENO, NV--(Marketwire - November 13, 2007) - SuperComputing 2007 -- Cisco® (
NASDAQ:
CSCO)
today announced new products and tools to support high performance
computing environments. The new Cisco SFS 3504 Multifabric Switch is a
gateway switch designed to accelerate server to storage application
performance using centralized high speed storage uplinks. Customers with
intense storage I/O needs will benefit from higher throughput to centrally
shared storage resources by deploying the SFS 3504 as an aggregation
gateway. Cisco is also introducing the Fabric Analysis and Correlation
Toolkit (FACT), a set of tools which can be used to analyze and manage an
entire InfiniBand fabric. FACT shortens the time for initial bring-up for
computational clusters and detects errors that may affect performance.
Together, these new products will help customers to improve storage access
performance, simplify fabric management, and improve diagnostics and
troubleshooting.
The Cisco family of high performance computing (HPC) products includes a
comprehensive line of Ethernet, InfiniBand and Fibre Channel switches
offering best-in-class scalability, high availability, and security, with
common management tools, common configuration interfaces, and a common
virtualization provisioning platform designed to provide comprehensive and
consistent management regardless of the protocol used. Together, these
solutions support Data Center 3.0, Cisco's strategy to help its customers
develop next generation data centers.
HPCwire Readers' Choice Award
At SuperComputing 2007 Cisco was honored with the 2007 HPCwire Readers'
Choice Award for Most Important HPC Networking Technology. The coveted
HPCwire Readers' Choice Award, determined through online polling of the
global HPCwire audience, represents important industry recognition by the
people who deploy and manage HPC technology. Supporting some of the
world's largest server clusters, Cisco technology has been deployed in
research and commercial HPC environments throughout the United States,
Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
SFS 3504 Gateway Platform
The Cisco SFS 3504 is a next generation InfiniBand double data rate gateway
designed to interconnect highly distributed server resources together to
centrally shared storage arrays in storage area networks and network
attached storage. The SFS 3504 is modular, provides up to four gateway
expansion slots, and has a best-in-class multi-terabit-capable backplane
for scaling to hundreds of servers across a single chassis. Because the
gateway modules are compliant with Fibre Channel and Ethernet switching
standards, no changes are required to existing storage networks. NetApp
has been collaborating with Cisco to test, benchmark, and validate the
Cisco SFS 3504 gateway switch with NetApp Data ONTAP® GX Systems and Data
ONTAP® 7G Systems for high performance computing environments.
"NetApp provides a unique value proposition to our customers through our
unified storage architecture, extensive data management services, and
operational simplicity," said Joel Reich, general manager of the NetApp SAN
and iSCSI business unit. "The combination of these benefits combined with
Cisco InfiniBand solutions provides additional business value to our joint
customers that are deploying high performance computing storage
infrastructures that require enterprise-class data protection and
management."
SFS 3504 Gateway Modules
The SFS 3504 gateways are hot-pluggable expansion modules. This allows
on-the-fly capacity expansion to both Fibre Channel and Ethernet storage
devices. By sharing aggregated gateway ports in conjunction with the
20Gigabit per second (Gbps) InfiniBand connection, clustered servers gain
access to more bandwidth, than an individually connected server could
access. The SFS 3504 gateway switch will offer twelve 20Gbps double data
rate (DDR) InfiniBand ports, a six-port 1GE InfiniBand-to-Ethernet gateway,
a two-port 10GE InfiniBand-to-Ethernet gateway and a four-port 4Gbps
InfiniBand-to-Fibre Channel gateway.
Fabric Analysis and Correlation Toolkit (FACT)
The Fabric Analysis and Correlation Toolkit (FACT) is a set of tools which
can be used to quickly analyze an entire InfiniBand Fabric and detect
errors in the fabric. FACT provides a central monitoring and management
platform for computational networks, pin-pointing components in the fabric
such as cables and host channel adapters (HCAs), which may need attention.
The toolkit simplifies deployment and management of InfiniBand fabrics,
providing syslog integration for proactive fabric-wide monitoring, and
includes high-availability features. FACT also securely authenticates with
all devices (SSH / SSL) and verifies the HCA and switch operating system
firmware across the fabric.
Collaboration with HP
In addition, Cisco and HP have collaborated on validated and integrated
configurations for the high performance computing market. This includes
testing a variety of interconnected blade system configurations across low
latency, high bandwidth InfiniBand fabrics, including the new HP Cluster
Platform Workgroup System based on the HP BladeSystem c3000. Access to
these validated and benchmarked solutions can help customers simplify and
speed system deployment.
Cisco Booth # 1121 at SC07
The new Cisco SFS 3504 gateway switch will be showcased at SC07 in the
Cisco booth # 1121. Throughout each day at the in-booth Cisco theater,
conference attendees can learn more about Cisco HPC solutions in a series
of educational talks by Cisco, its customers, and partners including Dell,
EMC, HP, IBM, and Microsoft. Sample customer presentations include:
-- Dr. Gerald Lotto, assistant director, information technology,
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard: "InfiniBand as a
Unified Cluster Fabric"
-- Tim Mattox, research associate, Indiana University: "MPI Is Dead?
Long Live MPI! Evolving MPI for the Next Generation of Supercomputing"
Cisco is also hosting two "birds of a feather" conference sessions:
"Scaling I/O Capability in Parallel File Systems" on Nov. 13 at 5:30 p.m.
and "Open MPI State of the Union" on Nov. 14 at 12:15 p.m.
Ethernet Alliance Demonstration
At the Ethernet Alliance booth, Cisco and Intel will jointly demonstrate
the 10GBASE-T technology as an interconnect for HPC applications. 10GBASE-T
will complement the 10 Gigabit Ethernet data center interconnect options
available today such as 10GBASE-CX4 and 10GBASE-SR. Based on the IEEE
802.3an standard, the 10GBASE-T interconnect will enable 10 Gigabit
Ethernet links over 100 meters with cost-effective copper cabling and
standard connectors.
Cisco Data Center 3.0
The Cisco vision for Data Center 3.0 entails the real-time, dynamic
orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of virtualized
server, storage and network resources, while optimizing application service
levels, efficiency and collaboration.
About Cisco
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Cisco
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Cisco
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