System Integration & Configuration
Unifying Hardware into a Single Brain: From Rack & Stack to Burn-In Testing.
More Than Just "Plug and Play"
System Integration is an engineering discipline that ensures 1,000 separate servers act as one cohesive supercomputer. Poor integration leads to "Jitter" (random slowness), overheating, and constant crashes. We transform disparate components into a tightly coupled high-performance instrument.
1. The Integration Lifecycle
Physical Integration
- Power Balancing: Distributing nodes across 3-phase power (L1, L2, L3) to avoid PDU trips.
- Airflow Management: Precision cabling to prevent hotspots in the exhaust aisle.
- Source-Destination Labeling: Essential for rapid maintenance in massive fabrics.
Logical Integration
- Firmware Alignment: Ensuring 100% identical BIOS settings (C-States, Hyperthreading) across all nodes.
- Subnet Management: Configuring the InfiniBand/Ethernet fabric for optimal topology mapping.
- Auto-Mounting: Ensuring /home and /scratch appear instantly on every node.
2. Operational Tailoring (The Personality)
We tune the system's "Personality" based on the scientific workload:
High-Throughput (Bio)
Tuning for millions of small packets and "Fairshare" scheduling to prevent job blocking.
Simulation (CFD/Weather)
Enabling "Hugepages" and strict "Process Affinity" (CPU Pinning) to minimize memory latency.
AI Training
Configuring GPU-Direct RDMA for peer-to-peer card communication bypassing the CPU.
3. The Crucial Step: Burn-In & Acceptance
Stress Testing for Stability
We force "Infant Mortality" failures by running the cluster at 100% load for 48-72 hours using Linpack or stress-ng.
This ensures that faulty RAM, fans, or PSUs fail while engineers are still on-site, not during a critical research run.
The Final Exam (Acceptance)
- HPL (Linpack): Verifies theoretical GFLOPS speed.
- IOR: Benchmarks peak storage throughput.
- OSU Benchmarks: Confirms sub-microsecond network latency.
Integration Toolset
| Category | Tool | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Provisioning | Warewulf / xCAT | Pushing OS images to diskless nodes via network (PXE). |
| Configuration | Ansible | Automating "Personality" settings across thousands of nodes. |
| Regression | ReFrame | Automated framework for running HPL, Stream, and IOR tests. |
| Hardware Control | IPMItool | Direct out-of-band management for power cycling and health telemetry. |
Ensure a Rock-Solid Start
Download our "HPC Acceptance Testing Protocol" to see the benchmarks we use to certify a new supercomputer.
Download Integration Guide (.docx)