sun ray deployment in a scientific computing environment
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Sun Ray Deployment in a Scientific Computing Environment. Ronald L. Crotzer NLIT 2009 Monday June 2, 2009. LA-UR - 09-03381. Background. X-Division Environment About 400 users Scientist Managers Support staff Students. Unclassified “Yellow” - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Sun Ray Deployment in a Scientific Computing Environment
Ronald L. Crotzer
NLIT 2009
Monday June 2, 2009
LA-UR -09-03381
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Background
• X-Division Environment
• About 400 users
• Scientist • Managers• Support staff• Students
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Background Continued
Unclassified “Yellow”
Connection to the Laboratories’
business and scientific
computing resources
Fire walled connection to the
rest of the world
Secure “Red”
User’s connection to the rest of
the Laboratories classified
computing resources.
User’s connection to the rest of
Secure computing world
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Background Continued
• The User’s Office
• Between two and four desktop computers
• Open Network: standard desktops and laptops
• Secure Network: diskless (Sun, Linux, Mac, Win)
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Background Continued
XCS Team
• Contracted server and desktop support from DCS-2• Team leader• Mac Team (4)• UNIX Team (5)• Windows Team (5)• Student (1)
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Sun Ray 2FS
Advantages• Security
• Network: fully encrypted connection to server
• Stateless local unit: hard to attack
• Limited I/O ports
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Sun Ray 2FS Continued
Advantages Redundancy built in with
the notion of a FoG (Failover Group)
A Failover Group is a pool of Sun Fire X2200 servers configured to run the same OS Red Hat Enterprise 4 Solaris 10
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Sun Ray 2FS Continued
AdvantagesOne-to-Many relationship between servers and desktop units
DisadvantagesOne-to-Many relationship between servers and desktop units
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Sun Ray 2FS Continued
Advantages• Desktop Units
• Low cost (~$450), low power draw (5-15 W), small footprint
• One DTU model serves basic, intermediate, and advanced users
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Sun Ray 2FS Continued
Disadvantages
Costs Start up cost for the
complete environment is not cheap
Yet another system to learn and support
Peripherals
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A Tale of Two Buildings
National Security Science Building
NSSB Exclusion Area
Security plan requires that systems be shut down at the end of the day
Strategic Computing Complex
SCC Vault Type Rooms
Security plan allows computers to be left on and running
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A Tale of Two BuildingsContinued
NSSB
Users were quick to adopt the new Sun Ray systems on
the secure network because of a new found level of
productivity. The Sun Ray unit can be turned off and
the user’s session is still active on the server.
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A Tale of Two BuildingsContinued
SCC
Users were slow to adopt the new Sun Ray systems on the secure network because they did not have the after hours restrictions.
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Summer Students
40+ Students are hosted over the summer each year
Most students, ~25, are located in the same room
Arriving May-June, Leaving August-September
Set up with OS-X, Red Hat, and Windows boxes
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Summer StudentsContinued
The way it was Mentor would say, “I have this old machine. Could you
build it for my student?” Wasted effort for a system that is going to be salvaged
at the end of the summer Build process was about ½ day per system Property items would get moved around, and the
tracking system would not get updated Room was hot because of CPUs and people
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Summer StudentsContinued
The way it is now Entire room was configured with 25 Sun Rays in about
6 man-hours
Sun Rays do not have property numbers, so they are not inventoried
Heat load in the room was significantly reduced
IP addressing is no longer an issue
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Graphics Capabilities
The Sun Ray DTU is capable of driving two monitors with
a native 1920X1200 resolution without sacrificing too
much in performance. Streaming video is quite
satisfactory for the average user
Plenty of real-estate for the average manager, support
staff, or student
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Graphics CapabilitiesContinued
Complications
Citrix video and audio streaming are fine for the
standard user; however, the business of our
customer is high end graphics
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Graphics CapabilitiesContinued
We have a solution for 30” monitors (2560X1600).
However, implementation in our current
environment requires an upgrade to the Sun Ray
Server Software (SRSS). When upgraded, our
users will be able to drive two 30” monitors within
the same session.
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Graphics CapabilitiesContinued
Graphical throughput for the high end users is handled
through Sun visualization servers
Visualization servers allow users to render large 3D and
OpenGL graphics with very good performance to the Sun
Ray
Performance is “almost” comparable to our current disk-
less systems
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Networking Secure
Network Benefits
Only encrypted gibberish
on the wire . Secure
“Red” connections are
contained within a VTR
(This is a goal and not
quite reality yet).
Complications
Highly specialized network
knowledge is needed to
configure the networks properly.
Three separate network
interfaces, switch connections,
and network configurations are
needed for each server
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Networking Continued
Unclassified network
The Sun Ray network is fully routable and can be delivered throughout the laboratory on the secure network. The unclassified network can be delivered anywhere with a 512Kbs or better connection.
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Computing Power Our environment is using modestly configured Sun
Fire X2200 servers with two duel core processors and 16-32 Gb of RAM. Memory can be expanded if needed.
Hardware scaling: Sun has recommended a 20-to-1 client to server ratio We are currently running about 8-to 1
Servers are not intended to be computing power houses. However, CPU usage hovers around 5% to 10% throughout the day.
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Computing PowerContinued
Benefits
This configuration allows the users to do some local computing without causing the other users on the server to suffer
When needed, more memory can be added
When needed, more servers can be added to the Failover group
Complications
Occasional user with run away processes
Some commonly used quality of life Apps do use excessive CPU cycles (streaming audio)
User has little control over the server and when it will need rebooting
Citrix servers are rebooted twice weekly for maintenance reasons
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Security
Advantages
Network connection is a fully encrypted connection to server
No local data Peripherals can be restricted to human interface
devices only Stateless local unit is hard to compromise
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Citrix
Configured to be used in a full screen (Kiosk) mode, or as an application on demand for individual programs in the UNIX environments
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CitrixContinued
Benefits Allows users to run
Windows programs on a variety of operating systems
Application patching on just a few systems
Everyone is using the same applications
Complications More complexity in
the environment Peripherals Printing One off applications
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Thanks
XCS Team
Ahmad R. Douglas
Tadeusz P. Raven
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Q&A
Questions?