Sun adds enterprise accounting tool

Government institutions involved in high-performance computing and other

large server environments have a new tool at their disposal to help them

keep track of electronic and human resources.

Sun Microsystems Inc. and Instrumental Inc. this week announced the

availability of Instrumental's PerfAcct 3.1 Enterprise accounting software

for the Solaris operating environment.

The collaborative effort allows the government market to easily allocate

resources, according to the company. It is ideal for customers who need

to run complex jobs from multiple interdependent processes — as in high-performance

computing (HPC) — said Gary Balog, program manager for Air Force and Defense

Department HPC at Sun Microsystems Federal.

PerfAcct 3.1 also provides the project accounting capabilities necessary

for major supercomputer centers, like those in the Energy Department and

at research laboratories with large, diverse communities of users working

for different organizations and divisions, Balog said. HPC environments

should benefit from the software solution, which until now was mostly used

in the mainframe world.

"They can look at the number of jobs they run on different computers — and who is using the jobs — and then do a charge back through no-cost

or allocation of resources," he said. "This has been prevalent in the mainframe

world, but large server environments like HPC can make use of it, too."

PerfAcct 3.1 is shipping now and will be available soon on the General

Services Administration schedule, Balog said.