Description:

In recent years, virtualization has started making major inroads into the realm of High Performance Computing (HPC), in application areas such as life sciences, electronic design automation, nancial services, Big Data, and digital media. The features and capabilities of VMware vSphere have the potential to reduce costs, improve resource control, increase utilization, and enable wider usage of the compute environment by providing much greater flexibility in usage. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory was able to successfully implement virtualization in their HPC compute cluster. This case study provides a good example of how a methodical approach to designing and architecting a virtual compute grid can be used to gain significant and measurable benefits.