IBM Platform Symphony
IBM Platform Symphony software delivers powerful enterprise-class management for running distributed applications and big data analytics on a scalable, shared grid. It accelerates dozens of parallel applications, for faster results and better utilization of all available resources.
The Challenge
All grid computing is not the same
For many enterprises, grid computing is the ideal solution to handle jobs like analyzing big data. And for grid-enabled applications, maximizing performance and scale are the key. But some grid products impose architectural limitations, requiring a particular operating systems or specific developer tools. With restrictive economic pressures, companies want better ways to improve IT performance, reduce infrastructure costs and expenses, and meet the demand for faster answers.
The Solution
Faster answers, fewer new costs
IBM® Platform™ Symphony software helps you control the massive compute power available in your current and future technical computing systems to address your most challenging and complex problems. You can achieve breakthrough results in business and research activities. You can address challenges in parallel application development and deployment, and technical computing infrastructure management. Platform Symphony software can deliver faster, better quality results–even while using less infrastructure.
And, with the flexibility to adapt when priorities change, Platform Symphony can reallocate over 1,000 compute engines per second to different workloads depending on policies and priorities you define. This translates into better application performance, better utilization and an ability to respond quickly to business-critical demands.
The Advanced Edition of Platform Symphony includes an Apache Hadoop-compatible MapReduce implementation optimized for low latency, reliability and resource sharing. Unlike the open source solution which has no capability to re-start failed services automatically, this function is built into Platform Symphony's MapReduce implementation, delivering improved reliability.
The Benefits
Fast service-oriented computing infrastructure
- Delivers faster throughput and performance
- Provides the agility to respond instantly to real-time demands
- Provides faster results for short-duration MapReduce jobs
- Helps reduce infrastructure and management costs
- Lowers application development and maintenance costs
- Enables higher levels of resource utilization
Whitepapers
- Advancing Bioinformatics with Platform Symphony Advanced Edition
- Architecture of an Enterprise Class MapReduce Distributed Runtime Engine
- Building A Dynamic Risk Infrastructure With Algorithmics
- Building an SOA infrastructure with Windows HPC server 2008 and Platform Symphony
- Developers Guide To Accelerating Microsoft Excel Models
- IBM Platform Symphony 5 Performance Update
- Impact Of Regulations On Risk and Trading Analytics In Capital Markets
- Top 5 Challenges with Hadoop MapReduce
- What is an Enterprise Class Distributed Runtime Engine and why use it?
Tools
Take the TCO challenge
Realize big savings on your big data or grid computing project
Webcasts
Reduce Cost with Hadoop Analytics
Combine best of breed analytic solutions to provide a low latency, shared big data infrastructure
Build And Test High-Performance Parallel Applications
New Ways to Build And Test High-Performance Parallel Applications
Agile IT for Dynamic Financial Markets
Share a common grid around multiple types of compute and data analytics risk applications on the same grid at the same time.
Literature
Hadoop for Dummies now Available
Crunch big numbers, manage complex models, and tackle intricate computing problems.
Breakthrough Hadoop results with IBM Platform Symphony and IBM InfoSphere BigInsights
Better performance, efficiency, and superior management and monitoring with IBM Platform Symphony
Success Stories
Major Wallstreet Firm
Drive down the capital and operational costs for a distributed computational grid, and refresh it for manageability, and to support new regulations like Basel III and more complex risk analytics. Read the story (PDF, 693KB)
Insurance Company
This insurance company wanted to scale out from a small, overloaded cluster to hundreds of machines to handle increased workload. Platform Symphony helped it run up to 10x more scenario models at once and reduced time to run complex stochastic simulations. Read the story (PDF, 1.30MB)
The Specifics
Flexibility and scalability are built in
Platform Symphony is most often used with programmatic (API driven) workloads. Whereas a batch scheduler can schedule jobs in seconds or minutes, Platform Symphony can schedule tasks in milliseconds. Because of this difference, Platform Symphony can be described as supporting online or near real-time requirements. Well documented APIs enable fast integrations for applications written in these languages: C, C++, C#, .NET, Visual Basic, Java, Excel COM, R and various popular scripting languages.
Platform Symphony clients and services can be implemented on different operating environments, languages and frameworks. Clusters can also be comprised of nodes running multiple operating systems. Platform Symphony can manage many different types of hosts in the same cluster and control what application services run on each host.
Product Editions
DeveloperDevelop |
ExpressDeploy |
StandardScale |
AdvancedConverge |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low Latency HPC SOA | ||||
| Agile Service & Task Scheduling | ||||
| Dynamic Resource Orchestration | - | |||
| Standard & Custom Reporting | - | - | ||
| Desktop, Server & VM Harvesting | - | - | ||
| Data Affinity | - | - | - | |
| MultiCluster Management | - | - | - | |
| Hadoop MapReduce | - | - | ||
| Hosts / Cores | 2 hosts | 240 cores | 5k hosts, 40k cores | 5k hosts, 40k cores |
| Application Managers | - | 5 | 300 | 300 |
| Desktop Harvesting | - | - | ||
| Server & VM Harvesting | - | - | ||
| GPU Harvesting | - | - | ||
| GPFS | - | - | ||
| Resources | Download Demonstration |
Evaluation Demonstration |
Addon Products
IBM Platform Symphony Developer Edition
IBM Platform Symphony Developer Edition, available for download at no charge, enables you to rapidly develop and test applications without the need for a production grid. Once applications are running in this edition, they can run at scale on a Platform Symphony grid. Learn more
IBM Platform Desktop Harvesting Software
IBM Platform Desktop Harvesting software for IBM Platform Symphony can harness idle cycles from desktops and add them to the grid. By automatically adapting resources to meet demands for compute and data intensive distributed applications, run times are reduced and service levels are improved, without additional capital spending. Learn more
IBM Platform GPU Harvesting Software
IBM Platform GPU Harvesting software for IBM Platform Symphony helps unleash the power of general-purpose GPUs by harvesting idle cycles. Automatically adapting resources to meet demands can reduce run times, improve service levels and help eliminate additional capital spending. Learn more
IBM Platform Symphony Server/VM Harvesting
IBM Platform Symphony Server/VM Harvesting software can harness idle cycles from a variety of server and VM environments. By automatically adapting resources to meet demands, run times are reduced and service levels are improved, without additional capital spending.
You need to preserve investments you've made in your server and virtualization environments. Learn more
IBM Platform Analytics
IBM Platform Analytics is an advanced analysis and visualization tool for analyzing massive amounts of IBM Platform LSF and IBM Platform Symphony workload data. It enables you to correlate job, resource and license data from multiple clusters for data-driven decision-making. Learn more
Complementary Products
IBM InfoSphere BigInsights brings the power of Hadoop to the enterprise with a wide array of value added capabilities not available in competitive big data offerings. Platform Symphony helps accelerate heterogeneous workloads while bringing true multi-tenancy to IBM BigInsights environments.
IBM Algorithmics are a leading provider of enterprise market and credit risk management solutions for the Financial Services market place. Core analytic functions in IBM can be accelerated by IBM Platform Symphony to deliver better quality decisions faster and more cost effectively.
IBM General Parallel File Systems (GPFS)
The IBM General Parallel File System™ (GPFS™), a high-performance enterprise file management platform, can help you move beyond simply adding storage to optimizing data management.
Intelligent Cluster leverages decades of IBM experience to reduce the complexity of deployment with pre-integrated, delivered, and fully-supported solutions that match best-in-industry components with optimized solution design.
Platform Process Manager simplifies the design and automation of complex processes, capturing and protecting repeatable best practices. Platform Process Manager can be used to automate workflows of IBM Platform Symphony and Platform LSF jobs on a shared grid infrastructure.
Contact
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