Improving Computer Performance: High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL) - An upgrade to Sun servers, storage, and software helped drive a 5x performance improvement at Canada's High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory, while increasing storage capacity 15x.

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High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL)

Canadian Computing Consortium Boosts Performance Fivefold With Sun Technology

Run by a consortium of seven Canadian universities and colleges, the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory, or HPCVL, is Canada’s premier high-performance computing center. It provides university-based and outside researchers with access to advanced computing clusters and associated resources. Sun Microsystems provided the computing and storage infrastructure for the consortium’s new data center in Kingston, Ontario, helping to speed research and provide users with secure, remote access to the facility’s compute resources.

Business Issues

• Accommodate research needs up to seven years in the future
• Speed current research
• Accommodate growing data volumes
• Improve access to computing resources
• Satisfy security, data integrity and compliance requirements of researchers
• Minimize total cost of ownership (TCO)

Solution

For HPCVL’s new high-performance computing lab, Sun provides a comprehensive infrastructure composed of compute clusters, storage and remote access capabilities via a Web portal to support approximately 700 university-based and outside researchers.