Windows HPC Server 2008 combines the power of
a Windows 64-bit Server platform with rich, out-of-the-box functionality
to improve the productivity, and reduce the complexity, of your
HPC environment. Windows HPC Server 2008, provides a comprehensive
set of deployment, administration, and monitoring tools that are
easy to deploy, manage, and integrate with your existing infrastructure.
Windows HPC Server 2008 enables broader adoption
of HPC by providing a rich and integrated end-user experience
scaling from the desktop application to the clusters. A wide range
of software vendors, in various verticals, have designed their
applications to work seamlessly with Windows HPC Server 2008 so
that users can submit and monitor jobs from within familiar applications
without having to learn new or complex user interfaces.
Developing parallel programs requires integrated
development environments along with support for distributed
computing standards. Visual Studio ® 2008 provides a comprehensive
parallel programming environment for Windows HPC Server 2008.
In addition
to supporting OpenMP, MPI, and Web Services, Windows HPC Server
2008 also supports third-party numerical library providers,
performance optimizers, compilers, and a native parallel debugger
for developing
and troubleshooting parallel programs.
ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY
Windows HPC Server 2008 allows you to accomplish more, in less time,
with reduced effort, by leveraging users’ existing skills and
integrating with the tools already in use in your enterprise. Administrators
and developers can save time with a common productivity and development
platform across technical workstation and cluster. Administrators can
use existing Microsoft management tools to centrally manage their entire
Windows Server infrastructure. Command line interfaces are fully supported
for administrators, and end users are not required to master command-line
interfaces (CLIs) to harness the power of HPC. Application developers
can work with familiar development tools, such as Visual Studio’s
native parallel debugger, to develop and troubleshoot parallel programs.
Teams can manage their projects and collaborate
using workflows by using Microsoft Office SharePoint ® Server
2007.
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SCALABLE PERFORMANCE
Windows
HPC Server 2008 is built on proven Windows Server ® 2008
x64- bit technology. Windows HPC Server 2008 can efficiently scale to
thousands of processing cores and includes management tools that help
systems administrators proactively monitor system health and maintain
system stability. Integration with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and
Microsoft® Windows SQL Server® provides failover capabilities
in the event of system failure.
QUICKLY DEPLOY A
MANAGEABLE
INFRASTRUCTURE
Windows HPC Server 2008 includes wizards, tools,
built-in
management consoles, and a To Do List (Figure 1)
to simplify the provisioning of compute nodes while
enhancing Windows Server 2008 Deployment Services
to allow you to create, modify, and deploy systems
images across a cluster. New management tools and
enhancements include the following:
NEW! The
time and effort for setup and configuration are reduced through
the
use of system
templates. Templates allow an IT professional to create standardized
system images or apply patches that can be consistently
deployed across the cluster.
ENHANCED! Operating system images
can quickly be deployed using Windows Deployment Services (WDS).
Progress can be monitored through the new HPC Pack
Administration console.
ENHANCED! Manage clusters programmatically though
command-line interfaces, PowerShell, or other scripting
languages such as PERL.
 Figure
1: The To Do List simplifies cluster configuration
tasks.
MONITORING, SYSTEM
HEALTH, AND REPORTING
Built on Windows Server 2008 64-bit technology,
Windows HPC Server 2008 includes scalable management
tools built using the new System Center interface.
The heat map (Figure 2) provides an overview of
system utilization. New tools and enhancements for
administrators include:
Figure 2: The heat map provides an at-a-glance view of system
utilization.
NEW! Windows Server 2008 Enterprise includes Failover
Services. The combination of Windows Failover Services
and SQL Server database clustering provide head node
redundancy in the event of a hardware failure.
NEW! Administrators
can create groups based on
hardware, software, or networking characteristics.
Groups allow for simplified administration and allow
optimal utilization by mapping jobs requirements to an
appropriate set of servers.
NEW! Built-in diagnostic tools allow administrators
to quickly identify and diagnose hardware, software,
or network problems across the cluster. Additional
capabilities such as: automating routine, redundant tasks,
and intelligent reporting and monitoring are possible
through the use of System Center Operations Manager
2007.
A
FOUNDATION FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE SERVICE
ORIENTED APPLICATIONS
(SOA)
The Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 includes a flexible job
scheduler that includes a command-line, graphical user
interface (GUI), and application programming interface
for submitting jobs to the cluster. The 2008 job scheduler
addresses both batch and newer service oriented
applications. It can also be deployed together with partner
job schedulers for additional advanced policies or mixed
environments. New job scheduling tools and enhancements
include:
NEW! Job
scheduling supports new SOA workloads. Compute nodes can communicate
with the submitting
systems through Windows Communication Foundation
(WCF) brokers. WCF brokers are dedicated nodes that
scale out cluster performance, and act as proxies facilitating
communication between public network clients and
compute nodes on the private networks. Additional WCF
brokers can be added to scale as required.
ENHANCED! The
HPC Pack job scheduler is multi-core aware, allowing sophisticated
scheduling by core, by socket,
or by server. The job scheduler supports existing policies
such as: priority-based first come, first served (FCFS),
backfilling, non-exclusive and license-aware scheduling, and
also includes new policies for job profiling, preemption, and
growing and shrinking of jobs.
NEW!The
HPC Pack reduces the complexity of integrating
with existing clusters by supporting industry standards
such as the Open Grid Forum’s (OGF) HPC Profile for job
scheduler interoperability. Additionally, the Subsystem for
UNIX-based Applications (SUA) integrates applications to
maximize existing investments while extending UNIX- and
LINUX-based applications to Windows systems.
NETWORKING AND HIGHSPEED
INTERCONNECTS
Windows HPC Server 2008 significantly reduces the
complexity of deploying multiple networks across a cluster
by providing an updated networking wizard, new network
diagnostics tools, and a simplified way of performing
network driver management. New functionality and
enhancements include:
ENHANCED! The
Microsoft Message Passing Interface (MS MPI) is based on the
Argonne National Labs
implementation (MPICH2) of the MPI2 standard. MS MPI
can utilize any interconnect that is supported on Windows
Server 2008.
NEW! NetDirect
is Microsoft’s
new Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) interface for high-speed,
low-latency
networks such as those running on Infiniband, 10 Gigabit
Ethernet and Myrinet. With an architecture that directly
bypasses OS and TCP/IP overhead, NetDirect achieves
better performance for massively parallel programs that
can utilize very low-latency, high-bandwidth, and enables
efficient CPU utilization.
WINDOWS HPC SERVER 2008
ARCHITECTURE
The Windows HPC Server 2008 architecture is
shown in
Figure 3.
The Windows HPC Server 2008 head node:
• Controls and mediates all access to the cluster resources.
• Is the single point of management, deployment, and job scheduling for
the cluster.
• Can failover to a backup head node in the case of failure.
Windows HPC
Server 2008 uses the existing corporate
infrastructure and Microsoft Active Directory ® for:
• Security
• Account management
• Operations management using tools such as SystemsCenter Operations Manager
2007.
Figure 3: Windows HPC Server 2008 architecture.
INTERACTIVE SESSIONS
THROUGH THE WCF
Figure 4 shows an interactive session through the WCF,
which includes the
following steps:
1. Clients create a session by specifying the WCF service
used to perform the calculation.
2. The job scheduler assigns a broker and launches a
service instance pool on multiple nodes.
3. Client connects to the broker and the job scheduler
provides the End Point Reference (EPR) of the broker to
the client.
4. Client connects to the EPR.
5. Standard WCF request/response messages occur.
WINDOWS HPC SERVER 2008
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The minimum system hardware requirements are similar
to the hardware requirements for Windows Server 2008,
Windows HPC Server 2008 supports up to 64 gigabytes
(GB) of RAM. Supported processors include AMD Opteron,
AMD Athlon 64, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T, and Intel
Pentium with Intel EM64T.
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