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Dell HPC General Computing – Configuration and Supported Architecture with Dell PowerEdge 13th Generation Servers
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Additional Dell IP and tools are also integrated in the Dell iso that are available when customers download
the respective iso from the Bright ftp website. The Dell version includes support for existing and latest Dell
servers and is fully verified and validated across supported configuration. It also bundles the latest Dell
System Management tools such as OpenManage and DTK that are deployed and configured at the time of
cluster install. Furthermore, there are automated scripts available that set and tune BIOS settings on Dell
servers for optimal performance. Additional integration includes add-on Dell network drivers and storage
controller drivers that are generally not available in the base Operating System.
With this release operating and administrating the HPC has become seamless. Be it updating firmware on
the compute nodes or setting the BIOS parameters, this could be performed with ease by accessing the
nodes in the Bright CMGUI. Bright uses Dell Life Cycle Controller at the background to execute these tasks.
Any anomaly or inconsistency can be seen in the Bright GUI and the necessary remedial steps can be taken.
Bright Cluster Manager 7.1 presents single GUI which reports details like health of a system, availability of
resources, options to change BIOS settings, firmware update, etc. Bright Cluster Manager 7.1 uses Integrated
Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) for systems management, remote console redirection and firmware
updates through Life Cycle Controller.
Figure 2: Dell BIOS Integration with 13G Servers
Third Party Software Drivers and Tools Integration
This release also includes support for high bandwidth low latency interconnect, ConnectX3 FDR/FDR10/QDR
from Mellanox. Along with it provides GPU and Accelerator support and integration for the latest technology
available. The current release includes the following versions of software stack, drivers and tools:
Mellanox OFED 2.4, Mellanox OFED 2.3, Mellanox OFED 2.2 and Mellanox OFED 2.1 available as
a drop down selection option
nVidia CUDA 7.0 for GPGPU support
Intel MPSS 3.5 for Intel Xeon Phi.
No factory installation of cluster software.