This IBM® Platform Computing Solutions Redbooks® publication is the first book to describe each of the available offerings that are part of the IBM portfolio of Cloud, analytics, and High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions for our clients. This IBM Redbooks publication delivers descriptions of the available offerings from IBM Platform Computing that address challenges for our clients in each industry. We include a few implementation and testing scenarios with selected solutions.

This publication helps strengthen the position of IBM Platform Computing solutions with a well-defined and documented deployment model within an IBM System x® environment. This deployment model offers clients a planned foundation for dynamic cloud infrastructure, provisioning, large-scale parallel HPC application development, cluster management, and grid applications.

This IBM publication is targeted to IT specialists, IT architects, support personnel, and clients. This book is intended for anyone who wants information about how IBM Platform Computing solutions use IBM to provide a wide array of client solutions.

This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world that worked at the International Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie Center.

Dino Quintero is a complex solutions project leader and IBM Senior Certified IT Specialist with the ITSO in Poughkeepsie, NY. His areas of knowledge include enterprise continuous availability, enterprise systems management, system virtualization, technical computing, and clustering solutions. He is currently an Open Group Distinguished IT Specialist. Dino holds a Master of Computing Information Systems degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Marist College.

Scott Denham is a Senior Architect with the IBM Technical Computing team, focused on HPC and data management in the upstream energy sector. After serving in the US Air Force Reserve as an Radar and Inertial Navigation specialist, he studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston while embarking on a 28-year career with the leading independent geophysical contractor. He held roles in software development and data center operations and support, and specialized in data acquisition systems that are used by the seismic industry and numerical acceleration through attached array processors and native vector computers. Scott held several leadership roles that involved HPC with the IBM user group SHARE. Scott joined IBM in 2000 as a member of the IBM High Performance Computing Center of Competency and later Deep Computing Technical Team. Scott has worldwide responsibility for pre-sales support of clients in the Petroleum, Automotive, Aerospace, Life Sciences, and Higher Education sectors, and has worked with clients worldwide on implementing HPC solutions. Scott holds the IBM Consulting IT Specialist Certification as a cross-brand specialist and the Open Group IT Specialist Certification. Scott participated in the evolution and commercialization of the IBM remote visualization solution Desktop Cloud Visualization (DCV). He has designed and implemented Linux HPC clusters by using x86, Power, and CellBE technologies for numerous clients in the Oil and Gas sector, using xCAT, IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS™), and other IBM technologies. Scott was a previous Redbooks author of Building a Linux HPC Cluster with xCAT, SG24-6623.

Rodrigo Garcia da Silva is an Accredited IT Architect and a Technical Computing Client Technical Architect with the IBM System and Technology Group in Brazil. He joined IBM in 2007 and has 10 years experience in the IT industry. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidade Estadual de Campinas, and his areas of expertise include HPC, systems architecture, OS provisioning, Linux, systems management, and open source software development. He also has a strong background in intellectual capital protection, including publications and patents. Rodrigo is responsible for Technical Computing pre-sales support of clients in the Oil and Gas, Automotive, Aerospace, Life Sciences, and Higher Education industries in Brazil. Rodrigo is a previous IBM Redbooks author with IBM POWER® 775 HPC Solutions, SG24-8003.

Alberto Ortiz is a Software IT Architect for IBM Mexico where he designs and deploys cross-brand software solutions. Since joining IBM in 2009, he participated in project implementations of varying sizes and complexities, from tuning an extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform for a data warehouse for a bank, to an IBM Identity Insight deployment with 400+ million records for a federal government police intelligence system. Before joining IBM, Alberto worked in several technical fields for projects in industries, such as telecommunications, manufacturing, finance, and government, for local and international clients. Throughout his 16 years of professional experience, he has acquired deep skills in UNIX, Linux, networking, relational databases and data migration, and most recently big data. Alberto holds a B.Sc. in Computer Systems Engineering from Universidad de las Americas Puebla in Mexico and currently studies for an MBA at Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM).

Aline Guedes Pinto is a Staff Software Engineer at the Linux Technology Center (LTC) in Brazil. She has five years of experience in Linux server management and web application development and currently works as the team leader of the LTC Infrastructure team. She holds a degree in Computer Science from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) with an MBA in Business Management and is Linux Professional Institute Certified (LPIC-1).

Atsumori Sasaki is a an Advisory IT Specialist with STG Technical Sales in Japan. His areas of expertise include cloud, system automation, and technical computing. He is currently a Service Delivery Manager at IBM Computing on Demand Japan. He has six years of experience in IBM. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology from Kyushu Institute of Technology.

Roger Tucker is a Senior IT Specialist working in the System x and IBM Platform pre-sales Techline team for the United States. He has over 25 years of experience in systems management and HPC. His areas of expertise include large-scale systems architecture, data center design, Linux deployment and administration, and remote visualization. He started with IBM in 1999 as an Instructor Mentor at Tivoli®.

Joanna Wong is an Executive IT Specialist for the IBM STG Worldwide Client Centers focusing on IBM Platform Computing solutions. She has extensive experience in HPC application optimization and large systems scalability performance on both x86-64 and IBM Power architecture. Additional industry experience included engagements with Oracle database server and in Enterprise Application Integration. She holds an A.B. in Physics from Princeton University, M.S. and Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Cornell University, and an M.B.A from the Walter Haas School of Business with the University of California at Berkeley.

Elsie Ramos is a a Project Leader at the International Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie Center. She has over 28 years of experience in IT, supporting various platforms including IBM System z® servers.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

David Bennin, Richard Conway, Ella Buslovich
International Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie Center

Greg Geiselhart, Magnus Larsson, Kailash Marthi
IBM Poughkeepsie

Rene-Paul G. Lafarie, Charlie Gonzales, J.D. Zeeman, Louise Westoby, Scott Campbell
IBM US

Sum Huynh, Robert Hartwig, Qingda Wang, Zane Hu, Nick Werstiuk, Mehdi Bozzo-Rey, Renita Leung, Jeff Karmiol, William Lu, Gord Sissons, Yonggang Hu
IBM Canada

Bill McMillan, Simon Waterer
IBM UK

Thank you to QLogic Corporation for the InfiniBand fabric equipment loaner that we used during the residency.

Here’s an opportunity to spotlight your skills, grow your career, and become a published author—all at the same time! Join an ITSO residency project and help write a book in your area of expertise, while honing your experience using leading-edge technologies. Your efforts will help to increase product acceptance and customer satisfaction, as you expand your network of technical contacts and relationships. Residencies run from two to six weeks in length, and you can participate either in person or as a remote resident working from your home base.

Find out more about the residency program, browse the residency index, and apply online at:

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