This is a step-by-step help document to setup and deploy a virtual HPC cluster on Hyper-v RC in Windows Server 2008 x64 editions (Standard/Enterprise/DataCenter). Target Audience: People who have a single powerful machine want to have or share the experiences on the Windows HPC cluster. People who have a few powerful machines want to have more nodes for test or demo purpose. Software requirements: 1. Windows Server 2008 x64 editions (Standard/Enterprise/DataCenter) 2. Windows HPC pack April CTP build Hardware requirements: 1. 64bit processors with hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel-VT or AMD-V) and data execution prevention (DEP) 2. 2G RAM and 40G HD at least. One physical disk for one VM is preferred 3. At least one NIC is need if the virtual nodes are required to connect outside of the physical machine. Note that Infiniband (IB) devices could not yet be supported by Hyper-V.

The choice of an operating system (OS) for a high performance computing (HPC) cluster is a critical decision for IT departments. The goal of this paper is to show that simple techniques are available today to optimize the return on investment by making that choice unnecessary, and keeping the HPC infrastructure versatile and flexible. This paper introduces Hybrid Operating System Clusters (HOSC). An HOSC is an HPC cluster that can run several OS’s simultaneously. This paper addresses the situation where two OS’s are running simultaneously: Linux Bull Advanced Server for Xeon and Microsoft® Windows® HPC Server 2008. However, most of the information presented in this paper can apply to 3 or more simultaneous OS’s, possibly from other OS distributions, with slight adaptations

For large computing clusters, diagnostics is where system administrators spend a lot of their time. Common tasks include: - Validate cluster post deployment or configuration change. - Troubleshoot failures. - Measure performance degradation over time. Windows HPC Server 2008 has 16 built-in diagnostics to help Sysadmins do diagnostics with ease. These diagnostic tests can be classified into the following categories, infrastructure, configuration report, and performance. Infrastructure tests include scheduler, system services, connectivity, and Service Oriented Architecture or the WCF broker model. While configuration report has application, network, software updates and system service tests available. Finally, we have two MPIPingPong tests that measure the cluster performance in terms of latency and bandwidth. The diagnostic tests are flexible and easy to run, and the results are filterable and searchable. System administrators can utilize the test results to further diagnose using built-in tools like clusrun, remote desktop, and node template features.

Monitoring and managing a large scale cluster often requires advanced tooling. System Administrators demand tools that help them to manage heterogeneous compute nodes, check cluster status at a glance, identify deviance, correlate node and job information, track changes, and the ability to integrate with existing IT infrastructure. Windows HPC Server 2008 admin console addresses all of the above problems with an integrated solution. The admin Console includes the following five main areas, charts and reports, configuration, node management, job management, and diagnostics. In addition, the console has a “pivoting” feature that allows the system administrator to navigate to different views by keeping the same context. Our Program manager Rae Wang, will go through each of the five areas with demonstrations and simple scenarios.