Programmatic instantiation, provisioning, and management of fabric-backplane enterprise servers
A system is taught in which a module having processing elements can access network and storage interfaces that are external to the module of the processing elements as though those interfaces were located internal to the module of the processing elements. The system may be operated as one or more provisioned servers, each of the provisioned servers including capabilities as identified by a corresponding set of specifications and attributes, according to various embodiments. Typically the specifications (or constraints) and attributes are specified with a Server Configuration File. An Enterprise Server system may be provisioned into any combination and number of servers according to needed processing and I/O capabilities. Each of these servers may include distinct compute, storage, and networking performance. Provisioned servers may be managed similar to conventional servers, including operations such as boot and shutting down.
1. A system comprising:
a hardware compute element enabled to execute a system management process operable to access a networked computing system template, the system management process further operable to instantiate a networked computing system according to the template;
a pool of free primitives comprising a pool of free hardware primitives, the pool of free hardware primitives comprising one or more partitionable symmetric multiprocessors having at least two portions, each portion operable as a symmetric multiprocessor, and each portion being coupled by one or more links, the links being configurable in a first mode to isolate two or more of the portions from each other and in a second mode to enable two or more of the portions to communicate memory coherency transactions with each other; and
wherein
the hardware compute element, on behalf of the system management process, is enabled to perform shared memory coherency transactions that are isolated by hardware from the pool of free hardware primitives,
the template comprises a hardware manifest of required hardware primitives, and
the hardware manifest comprises a description of a required number of partitions of the partitionable symmetric multiprocessors, each of the required number of the partitions comprising at least one of the portions operable as a symmetric multiprocessor.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the template further comprises hardware configuration information.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the template further comprises software configuration information.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the required hardware primitives are specified to comprise at least one of performance requirements, capacity requirements, bandwidth requirements, and hardware accelerator requirements.
5. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the partitions are physical partitions and the partitionable symmetric multiprocessors are physically-partitionable symmetric multiprocessors.
6. The system of claim 5 , wherein:
a first partition of the partitions is enabled to communicate via a switch fabric with other partitions of the partitionable symmetric multiprocessors.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein:
the first partition is enabled to communicate with itself via the switch fabric.
8. The system of claim 6 , wherein:
the first partition is enabled to communicate with an input/output interface via the switch fabric.
9. The system of claim 8 , wherein:
the input/output interface is enabled to communicate with a networking device.
10. The system of claim 8 , wherein:
the input/output interface is enabled to communicate with a storage device.
11. A system comprising:
a hardware compute element enabled to execute a system management process operable to instantiate a networked computing system according to a networked computing system template;
a pool of free primitives comprising a pool of free hardware primitives, the pool of free hardware primitives comprising a plurality of partitions included in a plurality of partitionable symmetric multiprocessors, at least one of the partitionable symmetric multiprocessors having at least two portions, each portion operable as a symmetric multiprocessor, and each portion being coupled by one or more links, the links being configurable in a first mode to isolate two or more of the portions from each other and in a second mode to enable two or more of the portions to communicate memory coherency transactions with each other; and
wherein
the hardware compute element, on behalf of the system management process, is enabled to perform shared memory coherency transactions that are isolated by hardware from the pool of free hardware primitives,
the template comprises a hardware manifest of required hardware primitives,
the hardware manifest comprises a description of a required number of the partitions of the partitionable symmetric multiprocessors, each of the required number of the partitions comprising at least one of the portions operable as a symmetric multiprocessor,
the partitions are enabled to exchange respective data via a switch fabric,
each of the partitions comprises a respective switch fabric interface to enable the respective data exchange with the switch fabric, and
the partitions are physical partitions and the partitionable symmetric multiprocessors are physically-partitionable symmetric multiprocessors.
12. The system of claim 11 , wherein:
the required hardware primitives are specified to comprise performance requirements.
13. The system of claim 11 , wherein:
the required hardware primitives are specified to comprise capacity requirements.
14. The system of claim 11 , wherein:
the required hardware primitives are specified to comprise bandwidth requirements.
15. The system of claim 11 , wherein:
the required hardware primitives are specified to comprise hardware accelerator requirements.
16. The system of claim 11 , wherein:
at least one of the physical partitions is enabled to exchange data with itself via the switch fabric.
17. The system of claim 11 , further comprising:
an input/output interface enabled to exchange data via the switch fabric.
18. The system of claim 17 , wherein:
the input/output interface is enabled to communicate with a networking device.
19. The system of claim 17 , wherein:
the input/output interface is enabled to communicate with a storage device.
20. The system of claim 11 , wherein:
the template further comprises hardware configuration information and software configuration information.