Posters on the Beowulf.org mailing list often lament the fact that the answers they receive when they post questions are so often prefaced by the term "it depends....".

The problem is, it does depend. The answer to any specific question always depends on many factors, and the answers are never as simple as the poster wants. That's life. HPC clusters are complex beasts, and the interaction between different components and technologies in your system can be complex. That's why we've provided this section for you.

This Reference Center is the place to go to understand more about a particular HPC technology or to research a particular HPC question you might have. We don't promise not to use it depends...., but we do try to explain what it depends on.

Check out the menu on the left to peruse a particular technology area that interests you, and we also provide summary tools that can help you understand different technological aspects of your HPC solution and how it all goes together to make your solution. Check out;

• Our Detailed Buyers Reference - Use this one to get detailed information on HPC solutions, technology, configurations and best practices. This one is for the detail oriented researcher type, and provides a good detailed introduction to design choices you'll face for your HPC solution. We challenge you to challenge your sales engineer with what you know! We believe that the more you know, and are able to interact with your sales engineer, the better your solution will be for you.
• Our HPC Buyers Guide - Use this section for an overview about the technology and configuration choices you face when configuring the best HPC solution for you. It ties back to the Detailed Buyers Reference and provides a good summary list to work from. This one is for the impatient "get me started now" executive summary crowd.

We update this section quite a lot as technology changes, so check back to see information on the latest and greatest as it comes out.