Reference Guide

Solution overview
6 Reference Architecture of Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC Life Sciences | Document 309
2 Solution overview
HPC in Life Sciences requires a flexible architecture to accommodate various system requirements. The Dell
EMC Ready Solution for HPC Life Sciences was created to meet this need. It is a pre-integrated, tested,
tuned, and leverages the most relevant of Dell EMC’s high-performance computing line of products and best-
in-class partner products (2). The solution encompasses all the hardware resources required for various life
sciences data analysis, while providing an optimal balance of compute density, energy efficiency, and
performance.
2.1 Architecture
The Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC Life Sciences provides high flexibility to cover various needs from the
large number of applications. The platform is available in three variants which are determined by the cluster
interconnect option selected as the storage component. This reference architecture uses a version of the
Lustre/ME4 series to discuss the updated solution. In the current version, the following options are available:
• Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 compute subsystem with Intel Omni-Path (OPA) fabric or Mellanox
InfiniBand (IB) EDR fabric (3)
- Storage option:
> Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC Lustre Storage as a performance scratch space
> Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC NFS Storage (NSS7.0-HA) as a home directory space
1
• PowerEdge C6420 compute subsystem with 10/40GbE fabric
- Storage option:
> Dell EMC Isilon F800 as a performance scratch space
2
(4)
> Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC NFS Storage (NSS7.0-HA) as a home directory space
• Add-on compute nodes:
- Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 (5)
> This server covers large memory applications such as de novo assembly
- Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140 (6)
> A server for accelerators like NVIDIA GPUs for molecular dynamics simulations
- Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd (7)
> FPGA and other accelerators can be accommodated with this server.
1
The current version of Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC NFS Storage is NSS7.4-HA. NSS7.4-HA will be added during the next
iteration.
2
There is no change in Dell EMC Isilon F800 for this reference architecture update. Detailed information about this storage option can be
found in the previous reference architecture paper (https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-
products/esuprt_software/esuprt_it_ops_datcentr_mgmt/high-computing-solution-resources_white-papers85_en-us.pdf).