Institute of Geology China Earthquake Administration IGCEA

Chinese Earthquake Researchers Boost Efficiency with Dual-Boot HPC Cluster

The Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (IGCEA) needed a high-performance computing environment that supported easy application development and management—unlike its existing Linux-based cluster. IGCEA deployed Windows® HPC Server 2008 on a 128-node cluster with a dual boot of the operating systems. As a result, IGCEA simplified management, boosted cluster deployment by 60 percent, and increased IT productivity by 50 percent.

Business Needs

Based in Beijing, the Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (IGCEA) is an integrated research organization that focuses on both basic and applied earth sciences related to earthquakes and seismic studies. IGCEA participates in research projects worldwide, and has a staff of nearly 400, including research scientists and academicians.

Now, by using Windows HPC Server 2008 to develop numerical models for evaluating building structures, people can build or re-build a structure using proper earthquake-proofing techniques.  Zhiqiang Li Doctor of Science Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration

IGCEA requires a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster to run its applications for seismic research and earthquake safety assessments. Until recently, IGCEA relied on a Linux Beowulf cluster—an HPC cluster using PCs as the hardware and running the Red Hat Linux Enterprise operating system — but the cluster was difficult to manage and lacked tools for software development and debugging. IGCEA created most of its in-house research applications using the Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 development system, and support for those applications was also critical. Additionally, cluster deployment was time-consuming with the Linux-based system, and its performance was slow.

Because IGCEA plays such an important role in assessing seismic and other natural hazards, as well as in supporting research and development for oil and gas exploration, a reliable and manageable HPC solution is vital to its operations and success.

Solution

IGCEA has relied extensively on Microsoft software in computing areas outside its HPC cluster, from the Windows® XP and Windows Vista® operating systems to Microsoft Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software, which it uses for data collection and visualization. Pleased with the overall performance of Microsoft software, IGCEA decided to explore an HPC solution based on Windows HPC Server 2008.

With assistance from the Ministry of Information Industry Software and Integrated Circuit Promotion Center (CSIP), IGCEA set up a test environment using an early version of Windows HPC Server 2008. The testing went well and, as a result, the implementation team began deploying Windows HPC Server 2008 on a production cluster. It set up 128 HP ProLiant BL460c servers using quad-core Intel Xeon processors in a cluster with HP Gigabit Ethernet. Three of the 128 nodes are connected by an InfiniBand communications link.

IGCEA planned to dual-boot the two operating systems from Windows HPC Server 2008 in order to use Windows HPC capabilities immediately and give its staff lead time to migrate existing Linux-based applications to the Windows platform. With the help of an onsite HP engineer, the IT staff made modifications to the partition scripts in Windows HPC Server 2008 to support management by the existing cluster management utility.

IGCEA set up the Active Directory® service to provide user account management for both Linux and Windows HPC systems. The new HPC solution will be used by about 25 people. Overall, the deployment went smoothly, and IGCEA completed the implementation within two weeks, finishing in June 2008. “Software from Microsoft and support from Microsoft partner HP really helped our researchers to move their applications from PC workstations to the HPC cluster very smoothly,” says Zhiqiang Li, Doctor of Science, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration.

Benefits

The Windows HPC Server 2008 deployment at IGCEA improved cluster and application deployment, boosted productivity, and provided a scalable solution for the future.
Benefits include:

• Streamlined cluster deployment. Li says the solution has boosted cluster deployment by 60 percent. “With the tools in Windows HPC Server 2008, even an inexperienced administrator could deploy a cluster with hundreds of nodes in just a couple of hours,” he says.
• Accelerated deployment of applications. IGCEA also found the new system helpful in deploying applications. “We can now deploy our internally developed research applications and updates 60 percent faster than before,” says Li. The ability to multicast an operating system image across the network was especially valuable.
• Simplified management. With the new administrative console in Windows HPC Server 2008 and its monitoring heat map, IT administrators can view the cluster’s status instantly. “We can quickly address any application performance bottlenecks,” says Li. IT staff can track the usage of each group or individual in the organization. And IGCEA uses Active Directory for managing user accounts to streamline access management and increase security.
• Improved efficiency and productivity. “With Windows HPC Server 2008, we have reduced our required computing time by using the Job Scheduler and parallel computing,” says Li. “We now complete more projects in a given period of time. Our productivity has risen by about 50 percent.” Li continues, “It is great that we do not need to spend too much of our time and human resources on building and maintaining an HPC platform. With the familiar graphical user interface, our researchers now can focus on their research jobs. We no longer need time to remember a series of command lines and their arguments.”
• Enhanced scalability. The scalability of Windows HPC Server 2008 supports the easy addition of new nodes to a cluster to support more advanced research models, which can make a big difference in public safety. “Earthquake prediction based on models is almost impossible,” says Li. “But now, by using Windows HPC Server 2008 to develop numerical models for evaluating building structures, people can build or rebuild a structure using proper earthquake-proofing techniques.”