About IBM Spectrum LSF

IBM® Spectrum LSF high-performance computing (HPC) clusters by using IBM Spectrum LSF as HPC scheduling software. This offering uses open source Terraform-based automation to provision and configure IBM Cloud resources. With simple steps to define configuration properties and use automated deployment, you can build your own HPC clusters in minutes by using your choice of an Intel x86 based VPC virtual server instance profile type for the worker nodes in the cluster. IBM Spectrum LSF also enables configuration for auto scaling, so IBM Spectrum LSF clusters can automatically add and remove worker nodes based on workload specifications. This allows to take full advantage of consumption-based pricing and pay for cloud resources only when they are needed. 

IBM Spectrum LSF offers the option of a public virtual machine, or virtual machines that are deployed on dedicated hosts, for static compute nodes only. The management nodes and dynamic compute nodes use public virtual machines only. The dedicated host option allows you to have systems that are assigned just for your workloads and avoids issues like a noisy neighbor. The deployment properties allow you to either "pack" or "spread". You can pack a dedicated host to full capacity before spilling to another instance or spread the virtual server instances evenly across all dedicated hosts.

In addition, IBM Spectrum LSF provides two shared storage options for you to manage your application data: File storage for VPC or Storage Scale. The Storage Scale option specifically works with static compute nodes only and allows you to deploy a high-performance file system with your HPC cluster.

The offering supports the bring-your-own-license (BYOL) model for IBM Spectrum LSF to deploy an HPC cluster on IBM Cloud. Make sure that you have sufficient software licenses to deploy the required capacity on the IBM Cloud cluster. For evaluation purposes, IBM Cloud does enable limited access. Contact your IBM Cloud sales or support team for evaluation licenses.

Spectrum LSF enables all three interfaces: UI, API, and CLI. To use the API and CLI interfaces, the Terraform-based automation code is available in this public GitHub repository.

IBM Spectrum LSF also offers the LSF Application Center, which provides a flexible, easy-to-use interface for cluster users and administrators. Available as an add-on module to IBM Spectrum LSF, the LSF Application Center enables users to interact with intuitive, self-documenting, standardized interfaces. You can access the LSF Application Center through the GUI, and you can also access the API calls with Python and curl.

The offering enables the initial Spectrum LSF-based HPC cluster creation. Any updates that are needed post-deployment regarding LSF configuration or setup must be performed by using LSF tools and commands. If you use the Schematics interface to change configuration properties and reapply those changes, you can cause disruptions to the running Spectrum LSF cluster. Restoring it back to a working state might not be easy.

Architecture diagram