Used at thousands of production sites worldwide, Grid Engine open source software enables organizations to build grids that help make employees more productive than ever before. The updated commercial version, Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software, is designed for organizations that need fully supported software for maximum productivity. By enabling enterprises to monitor and select the optimal usage of compute resources, the software dramatically reduces the time it takes to answer large, complex questions—from weeks or months to a matter of days.
Sun Grid Engine software implementations directly impact profits, or, in the case of nonprofit organizations,achieve more at the same cost. Electronic design automation software supplier Mentor Graphics, for example, now runs an application that previously took 13 hours in a mere 45 minutes by using a grid of 30 previously idle desktops.
Sun Grid Engine software can be downloaded and used without charge as long as the user doesn't need a support contract; an optional free evaluation support service is available via email. Users who need a support contract can simply purchase a commercial entitlement.
Sun Grid Engine software has a commercial entitlement based on ranges of the total number of CPU sockets to be included in the commercial grid and the number of master daemons. An enterprise-wide entitlement is available, which simplifies the task of auditing the licenses while allowing every single CPU in the company to run on the grid without additional charges.
To determine whether to use the open source or commercial grid software, answer these questions:
Do you have a large number of nodes?
Do you have confidential and proprietary in-house applications and services?
Do you face tight, changing schedules and need quick answers to fine-tune the grid?
Do you need to support many users, some in different geographic locations?
Do you need business-critical, optimal integration of third-party ISVs?
Do you have many heterogeneous platforms and operating systems?
Are you interested in using Solaris Operating System DTrace for eliminating grid bottlenecks?
If your reply is "yes" to at least two questions above, you may want to consider Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software with a support services contract instead of the Grid Engine open source solution.
Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software provides policy-based workload management and dynamic provisioning of application workloads. It creates a cluster of network-connected servers, workstations, and desktops, provides user access to the grid, and provides administrative and management interfaces. Computing tasks or jobs are distributed across the grid in accordance with resource requirements for the job, user requests for the job, and administrative/managerial policies.
A Sun Grid Engine 6.1 master can now manage a grid of up to 63,000 cores, meeting the scalability needs of even the largest grids.
Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software permits the administrator to use both built-in measures (such as system load and memory) as well as custom metrics (such as floating licenses and shared storage) to manage the utilization of grid hosts in a way that matches the site's usage policies while preventing over-subscription of scarce resources.
Advance Reservation allows users to request and reserve grid resources in advance—ike hosts, memory and licenses—for a specified time window. The scheduler makes sure the resources needed will be in place and available for the duration of the reservation. This allows users to coordinate grid resource availability with external factors such as individuals' schedules, equipment availability, or facility availability.
The new Service Domain Manager component of Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software enables two or more Sun Grid Engine clusters to share resources. Using service level objects (SLOs) as a guideline, the Service Domain Manager will migrate resources from underutilized, low priority clusters into heavily loaded, higher priority clusters.
The Service Domain Manager enables lateral scalability by adding new clusters alongside existing clusters without limiting flexibility or creating artificial resource boundaries. As workload conditions change, resources will migrate to where they are needed most.
Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software's new array task dependencies allow users to increase productivity and decrease workflow times by creating finer-grained dependencies among array jobs. Where previously every task of an array job was blocked until each task of the previous array job in the workflow was completed, individual tasks of one array job can now depend on individual tasks of another array job.
This new functionality allows array job workflows to execute with a much higher degree of parallelism, producing results faster and reducing time-to-market.
Enhanced Functionality for the Solaris 10 Operating System
The Solaris 10 Operating System offers administrators a wide range of tools to make their jobs easier. Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software now lets administrators leverage more of those tools automatically. Included in the new Solaris 10 Operating System tools support are integration into the Solaris Service Management Framework (SMF) and support for Sun Service Tags, which enables updated access to the latest information to maintain Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software and Service Domain Manager to ensure top performance.
Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software is available as annual subscription part numbers including Standard Support or Premium Support. The subscriptions are priced either per CPU sockets with unlimited cores each or per organization size (small, medium and large) with unlimited sockets.
Perpetual software entitlements are also available per socket. Sun supports Sun Grid Engine 6.2 software on any socket from any manufacturer as long as it is on one of the supported platforms. Please contact your Sun representative for a specific quote and to learn about all of the options available.
Sun provides a complete portfolio of affordable, interoperable, and open software systems designed to help you maximize the utilization and efficiency of your IT infrastructure. Built from the secure, highly available foundations of UNIX and Java technology, these systems deliver implementations that are preintegrated and backward compatible.
Sun's portfolio consists of Solaris and Linux software for SPARC and x86/x64 platforms, and the Sun Java Enterprise System—integrated software systems that target identity management, Web infrastructure, availability, and other critical business challenges. The Java Enterprise System is a subscription-based approach that changes the way businesses acquire, develop, and manage software. With the Java Enterprise System, network services and critical business applications are up and running faster, easier, and at a lower cost than ever before, so you can focus on innovation, competition, and bottom-line results.
