Interconnects

Dell has the experience, expertise and partnerships needed to define the best interconnect technologies for your high-performance computing (HPC) solution.

High-density rack mounted servers are popular configurations. Besides the compute nodes, each rack may be equipped with network switches, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), power distribution units (PDU) and others. For some types of applications where communication bandwidth between nodes is critical, low-latency and/or high-bandwidth interconnects such as Gigabit Ethernet, Myrinet®, InfiniBand™ and so on are common choices for interconnecting among compute nodes.

Several connections are available for cluster monitoring and management. Options include:

• A Dell™ Remote Access Controller (DRAC), which can be used for remote management along with the KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) that accesses the compute nodes through a nontraditional switch with cat-5 cables and TCP/IP networking
• The serial port and baseboard management controller (BMC), which are accessible through the first network interface card (NIC) and which provide a console redirection feature as an additional route for monitoring and managing the compute nodes from the master, without relying on the network connectivity or interfering with the network activities