SGI Wins $27 Million Deal for Defense Supercomputer

Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

SGI awarded $27.8 million DOD contract.  SGI announced that the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has selected an SGI ICE X high performance computing (HPC) system as part of its High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) to provide compute resources for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) DoD Supercomputing Research Center (DSRC). The contract for hardware, storage and four years of support is valued at over $27.8 million.  The SGI ICE X solution features 9,216 sockets (73,728 cores) powered by Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 series operating at 2.6 GHz and will boast a theoretical peak performance of over 1.5 petaflops. SGI's InfiniteStorage 5500 will provide 6.72 Petabytes of storage and operate on the SGI Lustre file system. "Breaking through the challenges faced by the DoD in research, acquisition, and operations requires increasingly powerful supercomputers along with the unique expertise and advanced communications infrastructure that the HPCMP provides," said John E. West, director of the DoD HPCMP. "SGI has long been one of our technology partners, and we look forward to extending that relationship with them over the coming years."

Dell enhances virtual desktop offering with Unidesk. Dell announced it is enhancing its Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) portfolio with the introduction of DVS Enterprise with Unidesk. Unidesk integrates with technology from both Citrix and VMware to provide the vital management capabilities needed to simplify VDI implementations. Using a layered approach Unidesk enables fully persistent and personalized desktops, supports worry-free user installed applications, and provides enterprise-class scalability and advanced management options. “Our customers have validated how Unidesk layering technology simplifies VDI, expands use cases, and brings greater ROI to desktop virtualization implementations,” said Don Bulens, Unidesk CEO. “We’re thrilled that Dell has recognized these same value propositions, and has made Unidesk a part of DVS Enterprise. With Dell’s market presence and Unidesk’s software innovation, the many benefits of virtual desktops are finally available to all.”

EMC and M7 partner for Citrix solution.  EMC and M7 Global Partners announced a comprehensive strategic initiative with EMC to collaborate on the development and deployment of desktop virtualization infrastructures that integrate world-class technologies from EMC and Citrix. The collaboration between M7 and EMC is grounded upon a set of tested and validated EMC solutions for the Citrix suite of products and includes support for key hypervisors and protocols as well as both methods of desktop creation (PVS and MCS). The partnership will extend these solutions by enabling accelerated deployments of both proof-of-concepts and full-scale customer implementations. "EMC is laser focused on accelerating the journey to cloud computing," said Parmeet Chaddha, Vice President, Solutions Group at EMC. "Our recent announcement of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure is a perfect example of how EMC, in conjunction with key resellers like the M7 Global Partners, is taking a concrete base of new solutions that are available today and partnering to assist customers in transforming their IT environment. We feel that through tighter technical, go-to-market and services alignment we can help customers more rapidly respond to key factors driving their decision to migrating to desktop virtualization."