Sun Ray Deployment in a Scientific Computing Environment

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Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s NNSA

U N C L A S S I F I E D

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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• 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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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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AdvantagesOne-to-Many relationship between servers and desktop units

DisadvantagesOne-to-Many relationship between servers and desktop units

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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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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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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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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?

[email protected]

Documents

Sun Ray Deployment in a Scientific Computing Environment