Compute Pools - The Fast Track of Utility Computing
At Azul, most of our communications have focused on the details of our Azul Compute Appliance and how data centers benefit from network attached processing. This month, I would like to focus on the “compute pools” that Azul Compute Appliances create. It’s really the compute pool that turns our appliance into a network attached processing solution for utility and grid computing and SOA initiatives.
What is a compute pool? Consider this observation made by Azul CTO, Gil Tene: the power company does not require customers to estimate how much electricity they expect to use in the coming month. Why not? Because they have so much of electricity they know one household or even a collection of households cannot exhaust the capacity. Power companies plan capacity at the city or regional level rather than at the household level. Utility companies, whether they distribute electricity, water, or gas, have a lot of the commodity that they supply in reservoirs or “pools,”-enough to make each one a pretty large chunk of capacity.
Imagine if the electricity company produced and distributed batteries instead of having a shared power station. It would have to plan capacity for each household, and it would have to provide excess capacity for every single household to prevent any of them from running out of power. A shared power station eliminates capacity planning at the residence level, while allowing the consumer to control how much is used and for what purpose.
Azul Compute Pools create a massively shared reservoir of compute resources using a virtually unlimited number of Azul Compute Appliances. With up to 384 processor cores and 256 GB of memory, each appliance contributes a large contiguous amount of capacity, and because these appliances are powered by SMP-capable multicore processors, data centers have the opportunity to build scale-up capacity at scale-out economics.
Just as important, network attached processing decouples compute capacity from the individual computer and moves it to the network where it can be delivered to any device and where excess capacity can be shared and instantly redirected. Because of our focus on virtual-machine based applications, Azul Compute Pools are accessible from any number of operating system and middleware platforms. Because the applications are unaware of the microprocessor or operating systems that serve them, it is possible to consolidate heterogeneous environments and make binary compatibility irrelevant.
Azul is going beyond the technology in order to address the complexity of how customers receive support as they create and expand their compute pools. “Pool Power” is a simple and complete annual subscription model that wraps all necessary Azul licenses, hardware and software support, and maintenance into a single package. Pool Power eliminates the business complexity of creating compute pools. What if a power company could order up a new electrical power plant and have it built and up and running in a matter of hours or days? When it comes to compute power, network attached processing is fundamentally changing the way compute is delivered.
For complete details on Azul Compute Pools, Pool Power, visit the Azul Systems website at www.azulsystems.com. And as always, please feel free to email your questions and comments directly to me.
Stephen DeWitt
President and CEO
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