The SGI Altix ICE 8200 system is an integrated blade environment which can scale to thousands of nodes. The SGI Tempo system management software enables administrators to install, configure, provision, and manage a system which scales from a single rack of 64 nodes to 1,000's of nodes.

SGI Tempo management software is designed for rapid deployment, efficient scaling, and reliable operations in the most demanding HPC data centers. While leveraging available open source tools for familiar cluster operations, it also delivers innovation in several key areas. These areas include a scalable and reliable Hierarchical Management Framework (HMF) which speeds deployment while improving performance and resiliency of the management functions. In addition SGI Tempo provides an innovative approach to diskless boot operations which reduces overall memory capacity requirements for diskless servers and increases reliability of the compute node by alleviating the need for a local hard drive which is a common failure component.

A summary of features:

• Hierarchical Management Framework (HMF) for scalability, performance, and resiliency
• System discovery, installation, and configuration tool suite
• SGI provisioning tools (innovative diskless boot capabilities leveraging the HMF)
• Tools for node image management and customizations
• C3 tool suite (open source) for cluster administration and application support
• Power management for intelligent power sequencing within the HMF
• Conserver (open source) for console management
• Tools for backing up and restoring system database
• Ganglia (open source) for system monitoring
• System event logging
• Event notification via SGI's Embedded Service Partner (ESP)
• Performance and system metric monitoring with Performance Co-Pilot (PCP)
• Diagnostic tool suite
• Firmware interrogation and update tools
• Compute node hot swap

Operating System Support
SGI Tempo utilizes SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server 10 on all nodes within the system. This includes the admin, leader, compute and service nodes. There are future plans to expand operating system support on the compute and service nodes.

Diskless Boot Operations
Diskless boot operations have the advantage of improving the overall reliability of each compute blade by removing a common failure component in every server, the hard disk. It also lowers overall power consumption and improves airflow through the compute blade.

SGI Tempo comes with a pre-built boot image for all compute blades within the cluster. Once these images are provisioned to the rack leader controller, the administrator can boot all compute blades within the system.

SGI Tempo v 1.3 was released in April 2008. SGI Tempo requires SGI ProPack v 5. For more information on How to Buy SGI Tempo, please contact your local sales representative or visit our How To Buy section.