Burst IBM Spectrum Symphony workloads into Azure with the new Azure Compute Fleet provider plugin

There’s a new resource connector that links the Symphony Host Factory with Azure Compute Fleet, making it possible for existing Symphony environments to seamlessly expand into Azure.

Why This is Important for Large-Scale Computing

Businesses that operate large-scale applications, such as AI, data analysis, and high-performance computing (HPC), require more than just basic infrastructure. They need a way to efficiently allocate thousands of tasks while ensuring performance, reliability, availability, and cost-efficiency are well-balanced.

To meet these needs, Microsoft Azure and IBM have launched the IBM® Spectrum Symphony Provider Plugin for the Azure Compute Fleet. This integration allows IBM Spectrum Symphony to dynamically manage Azure compute capacity, enhancing the execution environment and enabling businesses to easily extend and scale up their existing Symphony setups into Azure.

IBM Symphony is a well-established platform for managing workloads across sectors like finance, manufacturing, life sciences, energy, and other industries that rely on intensive computing power.

How the Integration Functions

At the heart of this integration lies an Azure resource connector for IBM Host Factory. This connector transforms Symphony’s resource needs into requests for Azure Compute Fleet, creating a direct link between Symphony’s orchestration layer and Azure’s infrastructure. The setup ensures that Symphony handles the workload, while Azure Compute Fleet manages the compute resources.

Here’s how it works:

1. When demand for processing increases, Symphony assesses how many extra resources it needs via the Host Factory.
2. The Azure resource connector converts these requirements into a Compute Fleet request, prompting Azure to provide the necessary infrastructure.
3. The newly provisioned Azure virtual machines integrate into the Symphony environment as execution hosts, ready to process jobs. When demand falls, these resources can be relinquished.

Benefits of the Plugin

The collaboration between Microsoft and IBM combines Symphony’s advanced workload orchestration with the expansive flexibility of Azure Compute Fleet:

• Provision and scale resources dynamically according to Symphony’s changing workload demands, ensuring efficient use of resources.
• Maintain optimal workload performance through an elasticity governed by existing workload priorities and service commitments.
• Utilise a broad selection of Azure Virtual Machines, allowing for flexible deployments based on workload needs and capacity availability.
• Make the most of Azure Spot instances to run workloads at the most cost-effective rates.
• Support hybrid workload orchestration, extending established Symphony setups into Azure, thus benefiting from the advantages of a hybrid multicloud deployment.

What Symphony Users Can Access on Azure

When using Symphony on Azure, customers can:

• Tap into a wider array of Azure capacity by provisioning from multiple eligible VM families, rather than being restricted to a single VM type.
• Choose infrastructure based on specific workload requirements like vCPU, memory, storage, and more.
• Balance availability and costs effectively through a mix of Azure Spot Virtual Machines and pay-as-you-go options.
• Enhance workload throughput and infrastructure efficiency by aligning queued jobs with appropriate Azure capacity.
• Increase compute resources during busy periods while maintaining a steady foundation for regular usage.

These features are particularly beneficial for tasks such as financial risk analysis, scientific computations, engineering evaluations, and other large-scale batch processes. Different jobs may require varying combinations of CPU, memory, and performance levels, and Azure Compute Fleet can cater to these needs by using suitable VM types and purchasing structures, resulting in quicker and more cost-effective deployments.

Modernising Established Environments

Many companies have invested significant time in building complex Symphony environments, which come equipped with specific scheduling policies, priorities, queues, service-level objectives, and workflows. This plugin helps protect that investment: the scheduling policies and operational processes remain within Symphony, while Azure provides the flexible resources underneath.

Microsoft and IBM are actively collaborating with various enterprise clients across the finance sector and other computing-heavy industries to enhance the integration and promote wider adoption.

“The native support for Symphony on Azure offers our joint clients a top-tier platform for managing HPC workloads with the performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness they need,” said Sripriya Srinivasan, General Manager for IBM Software Products. “This marks a significant progression for hybrid computing.”

Opportunities for Partners

For partners involved in HPC, risk analytics, or scientific computing, this opens doors for consistent engagement: evaluate current Symphony systems, design the Compute Fleet capacity strategy across Spot and pay-as-you-go models, package burst-to-Azure as a managed service, and grow usage as workloads increase.

How to Get Started

For a detailed technical guide on how to extend IBM Spectrum Symphony into Microsoft Azure using the new Azure Compute Fleet cloud provider, check out the Microsoft Community Hub: Microsoft and IBM bring enterprise-scale workload orchestration to Azure with IBM Spectrum Symphony.

If you’re ready to download the Azure Compute Fleet plugin for IBM® Spectrum Symphony, visit the Azure Marketplace.