Altair Raises the Bar for Secure HPC Workload Management

DENVER, Nov. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair, a global provider of high-performance computing (HPC) technology and services, today announced PBS Professional support for cross-domain configurations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, delivering robust new security capabilities for HPC workload management.

By supporting cross-domain (also known as multi-level security) systems, PBS Professional provides a better solution for flexible, highly configurable shared environments where security and performance are top priorities, such as classified research and development communities and government organizations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's cross-domain capabilities, provided by the platform's inclusion of SELinux features, deliver an out-of-the-box configuration that allows users and data at different security levels to share the same hardware. This is particularly useful for the U.S. military and intelligence communities, where information systems supporting multiple data sets (such as those classified as Secret, Top Secret, or Confidential) historically have had to remain physically separate due to security concerns.

By providing a cross-domain supercomputing platform, the Altair solution with Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables organizations to dramatically reduce HPC procurement costs. Rather than maintaining numerous individual HPC systems, users can now consolidate to just a few supercomputers, resulting in millions of dollars in upfront savings, reduced datacenter footprints and power consumption, and a simplified IT architecture.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux features tight integration with SELinux, which enables the platform's native configurations to offer Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), data labeling, and continuous monitoring of security controls," said Paul Smith, vice president and general manager, Public Sector, Red Hat. "Through PBS Professional, Altair abstracts these technical complexities to provide a consumable interface for cross-domain supercomputing, supporting multi-level security and unifying underlying security controls with workload management."

One of the most popular workload management products in existence, Altair's PBS Professional has been used for more than 20 years at thousands of customer sites to easily share distributed computing resources across geographic boundaries. PBS Professional is the flagship product for PBS Works™, a comprehensive suite for optimizing HPC environments that offers additional tools for Web-based submission, analytics and data management.

Altair is working with a user to produce a case study documenting specific gains enabled by the cross-domain solution, expected to be finalized in Q1 2014.

About Altair
Altair empowers client innovation and decision-making through technology that optimizes the analysis, management and visualization of business and engineering information. Privately held, with more than 2,000 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 28-year track record for high-end software for engineering and computing, enterprise analytics solutions, and innovative product design and development, Altair consistently delivers a competitive advantage to customers in a broad range of industries. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com or www.simulatetoinnovate.com.

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SOURCE Altair