Everybody's Workin' on the Weekend....

Taking the words from a 1980s Loverboy song and changing them slightly, a large number of Sun employees, partners, customers, and students are "working" this weekend at the HPC Consortium in Austin, TX. There's so much to talk about that it's going to be difficult for me to decide what to mention. Of course, I'm not the only person who's blogging this event, and some folks are on twitter, too.

Before I start my various blogs about the actual Consortium and the content of the presentations, though, I should probably talk about some changes in my job over the past couple of months which would help you to understand why I'm at this Consortium. As I had mentioned in a previous blog entry, Sun Grid Engine 6.2 had reached a significant milestone. So, once that milestone was reached, it was time for me to go apply my skills to some other products. One of my current projects keeps me closely affiliated with Sun Grid Engine, while the other is in a different area.

The first project is really not a new project, but it has advanced into some different areas. Last Spring, I became involved with a small project to provide a preview stack for people who want to develop HPC applications on Solaris. Sun Grid Engine is one of the components that comprise this stack. For information about the Sun HPC Software for Solaris project, see the HPC developer product community on OpenSolaris and the associated information wiki.

The other project on which I am working is an update to the Sun SAM-QFS software. As some of you know, I have spent quite a bit of time in various storage software projects during my career (some in a "previous life" at a company once known as DEC). So, it's nice to return back to the storage software world. I can't say a lot about that project yet, but from an information products' perspective, watch this space.

So, now that you know what I've been doing, it might be obvious why I am attending this particular conference. The link between HPC and SAM-QFS might not be as obvious as the link for the HPC Software for Solaris. However, the various features of the SAM archive management product and the QFS file system are used in many existing HPC environments. Furthermore, future features (such as object support on OpenSolaris) might make these products even more effective for HPC purposes.

Okay, that's enough to get this group of entries started. I'll have more to add over the next couple of days. Stay tuned.

Posted at 11:02PM Nov 15, 2008 by jcinfoblog in General  |  Comments[0]