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40-523: Altix is a line of server computers and supercomputers produced by Silicon Graphics (and successor company Silicon Graphics International ), based on Intel processors . It succeeded the MIPS / IRIX -based Origin 3000 servers. The line was first announced on January 7, 2003, with the Altix 3000 series, based on Intel Itanium 2 processors and SGI's NUMAlink processor interconnect. At product introduction,

80-1107: A computer monitor or input device, audio hardware and USB interfaces. Many servers do not have a graphical user interface (GUI). They are configured and managed remotely. Remote management can be conducted via various methods including Microsoft Management Console (MMC), PowerShell , SSH and browser-based out-of-band management systems such as Dell's iDRAC or HP's iLo . Large traditional single servers would need to be run for long periods without interruption. Availability would have to be very high, making hardware reliability and durability extremely important. Mission-critical enterprise servers would be very fault tolerant and use specialized hardware with low failure rates in order to maximize uptime . Uninterruptible power supplies might be incorporated to guard against power failure. Servers typically include hardware redundancy such as dual power supplies , RAID disk systems, and ECC memory , along with extensive pre-boot memory testing and verification. Critical components might be hot swappable , allowing technicians to replace them on

120-446: A 2.4-based Linux kernel . The SGI Advanced Linux Environment was eventually dropped after support using a standard, unmodified SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) distribution for SGI Altix was provided with SLES 8 and SLES 9. Later, SGI Altix 512-processor systems were officially supported using an unmodified, standard Linux distribution with the launch of SLES 9 SP1. Besides full support of SGI Altix on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server ,

160-522: A C-brick, which contains two nodes in a 4U high rackmount unit. Each node contains two Intel Itanium 2 processors that connect to the Super-Bedrock application-specific integrated circuit through a single front-side bus . The Super-Bedrock is a crossbar switch for the processors, the local RAM, the network interface and the I/O interface. The two Super-Bedrock ASICs in each brick are connected internally by

200-609: A Hierarchical Management Framework (HMF) for scalability, performance, and resiliency. While the earlier Itanium-based Altix systems run a single-system image (SSI) Linux kernel on 1024 processors or more using a standard SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) distribution, the Altix ICE's clustering capabilities use standard SLES or Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions and scale to over 51,200 cores on NASA 's Pleiades supercomputer . The Altix ICE 8200LX blade enclosure features two 4x DDR IB switch blade and one high-performing plane, and

240-433: A blade. Compute blades contain a processor node and consist of two PAC611 sockets for Itanium 2 and Itanium microprocessors, a Super-Hub (SHub) application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) ( chipset ) and eight dual in-line memory module (DIMM) slots for memory. The number of microprocessor sockets in a compute blade is one or two. One-processor socket configurations provide more bandwidth as only one microprocessor socket

280-403: A computer program that turns a computer into a server, e.g. Windows service . Originally used as "servers serve users" (and "users use servers"), in the sense of "obey", today one often says that "servers serve data", in the same sense as "give". For instance, web servers "serve [up] web pages to users" or "service their requests". The server is part of the client–server model ; in this model,

320-415: A device used for (or a device dedicated to) running one or several server programs. On a network, such a device is called a host . In addition to server , the words serve and service (as verb and as noun respectively) are frequently used, though servicer and servant are not. The word service (noun) may refer to the abstract form of functionality, e.g. Web service . Alternatively, it may refer to

360-411: A server serves data for clients . The nature of communication between a client and server is request and response . This is in contrast with peer-to-peer model in which the relationship is on-demand reciprocation. In principle, any computerized process that can be used or called by another process (particularly remotely, particularly to share a resource) is a server, and the calling process or processes

400-423: A service for the requester, which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the server runs. The average utilization of a server in the early 2000s was 5 to 15%, but with the adoption of virtualization this figure started to increase to reduce the number of servers needed. Strictly speaking, the term server refers to a computer program or process (running program). Through metonymy , it refers to

440-407: A single 6.4 GB/s NUMAlink 4 channel. A processor node also contains 16 DIMM slots that accept standard DDR DIMMs with capacities of 4 to 16 GB. The Altix 3700 Bx2 is a high-end model supporting 16 to 2,048 Itanium 2 processors and 12 GB to 24 TB of memory. It requires one or multiple tall (40U) racks. The Altix 4000 is the next Itanium-based product line. It has two models,

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480-506: A single system image. In 2010 and 2011, SGI retired the Altix name for new servers produced by the company. Altix UV and Altix ICE have been shortened to "SGI UV" and "SGI ICE," while the Altix XE line is named "Rackable." Server (computing) Client–server systems are usually most frequently implemented by (and often identified with) the request–response model: a client sends a request to

520-516: A standard and unmodified Red Hat Enterprise Linux was also fully supported starting with SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 with RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 with system processor limits defined by Red Hat for those releases. On November 14, 2005, SGI introduced the Altix 4000 series based on the Itanium 2. The Altix 3000 and 4000 are distributed shared memory multiprocessors . SGI later officially supported 1024-processor systems on an unmodified, standard Linux distribution with

560-406: Is a client. Thus any general-purpose computer connected to a network can host servers. For example, if files on a device are shared by some process, that process is a file server . Similarly, web server software can run on any capable computer, and so a laptop or a personal computer can host a web server. While request–response is the most common client-server design, there are others, such as

600-618: Is a collaborative effort, Open Compute Project around this concept. A class of small specialist servers called network appliances are generally at the low end of the scale, often being smaller than common desktop computers. A mobile server has a portable form factor, e.g. a laptop . In contrast to large data centers or rack servers, the mobile server is designed for on-the-road or ad hoc deployment into emergency, disaster or temporary environments where traditional servers are not feasible due to their power requirements, size, and deployment time. The main beneficiaries of so-called "server on

640-427: Is also less of a concern, but power consumption and heat output can be a serious issue. Server rooms are equipped with air conditioning devices. A server farm or server cluster is a collection of computer servers maintained by an organization to supply server functionality far beyond the capability of a single device. Modern data centers are now often built of very large clusters of much simpler servers, and there

680-518: Is contained within a blade that plugs into an enclosure, the individual rack unit (IRU). The IRU is a 10U enclosure that contains the necessary components to support the blades such as the power supplies, two router boards (one for every five blades) and a L1 controller. Each IRU can support ten single-wide blades or two double-wide blades and eight single-width blades. The IRUs are mounted in 42U-high rack, and each rack supports up to four IRUs. Two types of node, processor and memory, are contained within

720-405: Is contrasted with "user", distinguishing two types of host : "server-host" and "user-host". The use of "serving" also dates to early documents, such as RFC 4, contrasting "serving-host" with "using-host". The Jargon File defines server in the common sense of a process performing service for requests, usually remote, with the 1981 version reading: SERVER n. A kind of DAEMON which performs

760-484: Is instead based on 1U-high compute modules mounted in a rack and connected with NUMAlink . A single system may contain 1 to 16 Itanium 2 processors and 2 to 128 GB of memory. The Altix 1330 is a cluster of Altix 330 systems. The systems are networked with Gigabit Ethernet or 4X InfiniBand . The Altix 350 is a mid-range model that supports up to 32 Itanium 2 processors. Introduced in 2005, it runs Linux , rather than SGI's own Unix variant, IRIX . The Altix 350

800-401: Is scalable from one to thirty-two 64-bit Intel Itanium processors . It features DDR SDRAM and PCI-X expansion ports, and can support SCSI or SATA internal hard drives . Designed as a rack-mount server, the Altix 350 is 2U, meaning it occupies two slots vertically in a standard server rack . The Altix 1350 is a cluster of Altix 350 systems. As of December 2006, the Altix 350

840-435: Is using the front side bus and local memory. Two-processor socket configurations do not support hyperthreading. Memory blades are used to expand the amount of memory without increasing the number of processors. They contain a SHub ASIC and 12 DIMM slots. Both compute and memory blades support 1, 2 4, 8, and 16 GB DIMMs. SGI support does not support any installations with 16 GB DIMMs. Multiple servers can be combined on

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880-694: The Internet is based upon a client–server model. High-level root nameservers , DNS , and routers direct the traffic on the internet. There are millions of servers connected to the Internet, running continuously throughout the world and virtually every action taken by an ordinary Internet user requires one or more interactions with one or more servers. There are exceptions that do not use dedicated servers; for example, peer-to-peer file sharing and some implementations of telephony (e.g. pre-Microsoft Skype ). Hardware requirement for servers vary widely, depending on

920-409: The publish–subscribe pattern . In the publish-subscribe pattern, clients register with a pub-sub server, subscribing to specified types of messages; this initial registration may be done by request-response. Thereafter, the pub-sub server forwards matching messages to the clients without any further requests: the server pushes messages to the client, rather than the client pulling messages from

960-822: The AMD Opteron 6100 series processors. As of 2013, these use the Xeon Phi coprocessors. The Altix UV supercomputer architecture was announced in November 2009. Codenamed Ultraviolet during development, the Altix UV combines a development of the NUMAlink interconnect used in the Altix 4000 (NUMAlink 5) with quad-, six- or eight-core " Nehalem-EX " Intel Xeon 7500 processors. Altix UV systems run either SuSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and scale from 32 to 2,048 cores with support for up to 16 terabytes (TB) of shared memory in

1000-496: The Altix 3000 with graphics capability is known as the Prism . The 3700 is based on the third generation NUMAflex distributed shared memory architecture and it uses the NUMAlink 4 interconnection fabric. The Altix 3000 supports a single system image of 64 processors. If there are more than 64 processors in a system, then the system must be partitioned. The basic building block is called

1040-425: The Altix 450 a mid-range server, and the Altix 4700 a high-end server. An Altix 4700 system contains up to 2048 dual-core Itanium 2 and Itanium ("Montvale" revision) microprocessor sockets, connected by the NUMAlink 4 interconnect in a fat tree network topology. The microprocessors are accompanied by up to 128 TB of memory (192 TB with single microprocessor socket blades and 16 GB DIMMs). Each node

1080-541: The Altix ICE 8200EX features four 4x DDR IB switch blades, and two high-performing planes. Both configurations support either hypercube or fat tree topology, and 16 compute blades within an IRU. The IP-83 and IP-85 compute blades support Intel Xeon 5200 or 5400 Series processors, and the IP-95 compute blade support Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors. In November 2011 the ICE 8400 is based on either Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 processors or

1120-847: The Internet, the dominant operating systems among servers are UNIX-like open-source distributions , such as those based on Linux and FreeBSD , with Windows Server also having a significant share. Proprietary operating systems such as z/OS and macOS Server are also deployed, but in much smaller numbers. Servers that run Linux are commonly used as Webservers or Databanks. Windows Servers are used for Networks that are made out of Windows Clients. Specialist server-oriented operating systems have traditionally had features such as: In practice, today many desktop and server operating systems share similar code bases , differing mostly in configuration. In 2010, data centers (servers, cooling, and other electrical infrastructure) were responsible for 1.1–1.5% of electrical energy consumption worldwide and 1.7–2.2% in

1160-592: The United States. One estimate is that total energy consumption for information and communications technology saves more than 5 times its carbon footprint in the rest of the economy by increasing efficiency. Global energy consumption is increasing due to the increasing demand of data and bandwidth. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) states that data centers used 91 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) electrical energy in 2013 which accounts to 3% of global electricity usage. Environmental groups have placed focus on

1200-411: The go" technology include network managers, software or database developers, training centers, military personnel, law enforcement, forensics, emergency relief groups, and service organizations. To facilitate portability, features such as the keyboard , display , battery ( uninterruptible power supply , to provide power redundancy in case of failure), and mouse are all integrated into the chassis. On

1240-518: The launch of SLES 10 in July 2006. SGI Altix 4700 was also officially supported by Red Hat with RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 — maximum processor limits were as defined by Red Hat for its RHEL releases. The Altix brand was used for systems based on multi-core Intel Xeon processors. These include the Altix XE rackmount servers, Altix ICE blade servers and Altix UV supercomputers. NASA 's Columbia supercomputer , installed in 2004 and decommissioned in 2013,

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1280-564: The running server without shutting it down, and to guard against overheating, servers might have more powerful fans or use water cooling . They will often be able to be configured, powered up and down, or rebooted remotely, using out-of-band management , typically based on IPMI . Server casings are usually flat and wide , and designed to be rack-mounted, either on 19-inch racks or on Open Racks . These types of servers are often housed in dedicated data centers . These will normally have very stable power and Internet and increased security. Noise

1320-460: The same Numalink fabric up to the theoretical maximum of 8,192 nodes (16,384 OS CPUs). The Altix XE servers use Intel Xeon x86-64 -architecture processors. Models include: All Altix XE systems support Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server , Red Hat Enterprise Linux , and Microsoft Windows . VMware support was added across the Altix XE product line. The Altix ICE blade platform is an Intel Xeon-based system featuring diskless compute blades and

1360-411: The server as in request-response. The role of a server is to share data as well as to share resources and distribute work. A server computer can serve its own computer programs as well; depending on the scenario, this could be part of a quid pro quo transaction, or simply a technical possibility. The following table shows several scenarios in which a server is used. Almost the entire structure of

1400-412: The server's purpose and its software. Servers often are more powerful and expensive than the clients that connect to them. The name server is used both for the hardware and software pieces. For the hardware servers, it is usually limited to mean the high-end machines although software servers can run on a variety of hardwares. Since servers are usually accessed over a network, many run unattended without

1440-456: The server, which performs some action and sends a response back to the client, typically with a result or acknowledgment. Designating a computer as "server-class hardware" implies that it is specialized for running servers on it. This often implies that it is more powerful and reliable than standard personal computers , but alternatively, large computing clusters may be composed of many relatively simple, replaceable server components. The use of

1480-430: The system supported up to 64 processors running Linux as a single system image and shipped with a Linux distribution called SGI Advanced Linux Environment, which was compatible with Red Hat Advanced Server . By August 2003, many SGI Altix customers were running Linux on 128- and 256-processor SGI Altix systems. SGI officially announced 256-processor support within a single system image of Linux on March 10, 2004, using

1520-565: The word server in computing comes from queueing theory , where it dates to the mid 20th century, being notably used in Kendall (1953) (along with "service"), the paper that introduced Kendall's notation . In earlier papers, such as the Erlang (1909) , more concrete terms such as "[telephone] operators" are used. In computing, "server" dates at least to RFC 5 (1969), one of the earliest documents describing ARPANET (the predecessor of Internet ), and

1560-400: Was a 10240-microprocessor cluster of twenty Altix 3000 systems, each with 512 microprocessors, interconnected with InfiniBand . The Altix 3000 is the first generation of Altix systems. It was succeeded by the Altix 4000 in 2004, and the last model was discontinued on December 31, 2006. The Altix 330 is an entry-level server. Unlike the high-end models, the Altix 330 is not "brick" based, but

1600-499: Was superseded by the Altix 450 (based on the Itanium 2 ) and the Altix XE (based on the Xeon ). The Altix 3300 is a mid-range model supporting 4 to 12 processors and 2 to 48 GB of memory. It is packaged in a short (17U) rack. The Altix 3700 is a high-end model supporting 16 to 512 processors and 8 GB to 2 TB of memory. It requires one or multiple tall (39U) rack (s). A variant of

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