If you are carrying an HPC deployment where you deploy the operating system by your own means (wds, ghost, true image, etc.) and will run the HPC pack on the nodes, it’s actually quite easy to install the HPC pack on the node w/o logging in at all. I’m assuming your nodes are already part of the domain where the cluster will run.

First, download psexec and place it on c:\windows\system32\ on your headnode. Then, open a command prompt and enter:

psexec -s \\[NODE-NAME] \\hpc-hn\REMINST\setup.exe -unattend -computenode:[CLUSTER-NAME]

Make sure to replace [NODE-NAME] & [CLUSTER-NAME] with your values. That command will take about 1 minute to run and sooner than later, you will have the node showing up on cluster manager waiting for a template, no need to log on the node at all!

As I am documenting a lab, I’m playing with the RC version of Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, which you can download from connect.microsoft.com. As I am documenting some of the features, I have noticed a lot of things have changed in the GUI, and thought about documenting them here since these minor details will probably will not in the lab itself.

The Icon

“Pfft, the icon?” you may ask, but this is a welcomed addition. I for one, could never tell the icon from Server Manager and Cluster Manager, they were too much alike. The new icon sports a modern look:

Node View Improvements

The Node View displays a wealth of information just by looking at the regular node tab. v2 of Windows HPC Server had the following tabs: Properties, Network, Metrics, Operations, and Provisioning Log (click on any image for a better look):

v3 has the following tabs: Node Health, Properties, Network, Metrics, Operations, and Provisioning Log. The Node Health tab is incredibly useful feature, as you can now get a general idea of the node state by looking at this tab. The pivoting links provide a quick access to other related areas of that have to do with this node:

The Heat Map

The Heat Map has gone a mayor overhaul, starting with the introduction of Tab Actions. This feature allows you to have multiple heat maps (each still can have up to 3 metrics), but by having as many Node Map Action tabs, you can have as many Heat Maps with different metrics as you’d like, which is incredibly useful IMHO:

One of my major gripes in v2 was the lack more metrics than the ones that were available for monitoring. v3 is not shy on the metrics that are now available, and you can see it in when selecting the metrics for List Views:

I’ll keep posting small posts on more things that I find differently. So far, V3 feels like a great improvement. Windows HPC Server has come a long way, and it’s nice to have seen its evolution since the days when it had the “Compute Cluster 2003” name.

HPC Pack SP2 was released a while back, but if you try and find it, you won’t be able to – what gives? After searching a bit in the Windows HPC Server Job Submission and Scheduling forums, I found the answer:

A minor issue was found in SP2 that could affect users who have applications that interact with the HPC job scheduler via COM. While we prepare a fix for the issue we have disabled the downloads of SP2.

Last Friday marked the end of a 3-day event in México City around High Performance Computing for IT Professionals. The attendees learned everything they need to know regarding Windows HPC Server 2008 in terms of setup, scheduling jobs, PowerShell, command line, network topologies, SOA, job templates, node templates, and node groups. The crowd was great to work with, highly-skilled individuals form different backgrounds, some wanting to get their feet wet with this technology, and other experienced folks who wanted to learn more about advanced topics.

This was my first time in México City and it’s unfortunate that I could not stay a bit longer to get to know the city a little better. At least we got to try authentic Mexican food and ate at a legitimate “Taquería” close to the event venue, the “Borrego Viudo” while watching the Mexican soccer team beat Italy in the World Cup:

As a follow-up to our attendees, I would like to communicate the following:

1. Your diplomas for the course completion can be obtained from KED starting June 7th (contact person is Liliana Gutiérrez)
2. If you would like a copy of the training material, please drop me an e-mail and I’ll make sure you get a copy (csaborio at scorpiotek dot com)

Now, off to TechEd NA 2010!

Note: This script will work with PowerShell v1.0 and is slow.  If you would like a faster version and you are willing to upgrade your head-node to v2, check this post instead.

I’ve been working in creating a series of demos for a couple of HPC trainings we are delivering this month.  One of the things that I’ve noticed with the heat map, is that when restoring the nodes from a snapshot (they are virtual nodes) the heat map fail to display the info.  This is due to some services on the nodes not starting and failing to communicate with the head node.  The solution is to go through every node and restart this service.  Good luck doing that if you are running a 1,000 node cluster!

You might think “well, why not just use clusrun to stop and start the service?”  Thought of that and then realized that one of the services that need to be restarted is the one that is used for clusrun, so as soon as you shut it down, your clusrun session is over.

Once again, psexec and PowerShell save the day.  If you would like to restore heat map functionality from the head node to all nodes on your cluster, follow these steps:

1. Download and drop a copy of psexec on c:\Windows\System32 on your head node
2. Copy the PowerShell code below and save it in a file, say “C:\FixHeatMap.ps1″

   $HEAD_NODE = "HPC-HN"
   Write-Host "Setting Head Node To:" $HEAD_NODE
   Set-Content Env:CCP_SCHEDULER $HEAD_NODE
   
   $nodes = Get-HpcNode
   $services = "HpcManagement", "HpcNodeManager"
   
   foreach ($node in $nodes)  {
   foreach ($service in $services) {
   
   $serviceStart = "net stop $service"
   $serviceStop = "net start $service"
   $commandBytesStart = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes($serviceStart)
   $commandBytesStop = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes($serviceStop)
   $encodedStartCommand = [Convert]::ToBase64String($commandBytesStart)
   $encodedStopCommand = [Convert]::ToBase64String($commandBytesStop)
   $commandLine += $encodedCommand
   
   $computer = $node.NetBiosName
   $computer = "\\$computer"
   
   psexec $computer cmd /c "echo . | powershell -EncodedCommand $encodedStartCommand"
   psexec $computer cmd /c "echo . | powershell -EncodedCommand $encodedStopCommand"
   }
   }
   #Start the service that retrieves info from CN to heat-map
   net stop HpcSdm
   net start HpcSdm
   

3. Edit the text of the file so that $HEAD_NODE = “HPC-HN” matches the name of your head node
4. Open an HPC PowerShell command prompt and launch the script, here is the script in action with 4 nodes:

One of the things you will notice is that it can be slow as 3 services are started and stopped for every node via a remote call with psexec.  I know the process can be long but I don’t have time to optimize it.  If there are PowerShell gurus that would like to chip in, please be my guest!

Sources

• http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/UsingPowerShellAndPsExecToInvokeExpressionsOnRemoteComputers.aspx

When you uninstall the HPC 2008 Compute Cluster Pack and try to install it again, you might be faced with the following error:

This usually happens when for whatever reason, the SQL instance that HPC Server 2008 uses is left behind; thus, when installing the pack for a second time, it will fail because it cannot overwrite the instance. The bad part is that you cannot uninstall it, because you already did. In order to fix this issue here is what I did:

1. Install SQL Server Express (stand alone, it must NOT be R2, use this one)
2. Once installed, uninstall SQL Server, it will let you select the instance that did not get uninstalled
3. It will complain about SQL process running, you MUST kill the sql process\
4. Uninstall other SQL components
5. Once uninstalled, install the HPC pack again, the DB will be created and HPC PAck 2008 will be installed without problems

Hope this helps someone in the future.

Sweet! Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 left Beta2 status and is now in RC1! How to get the software? Go to Microsoft’s HPC main page and click on the link that is shown below:

After logging in and visiting the dashboard, you will be able to download RC1:

Please post if you have any problems!

During our LATAM Jumpstart conferences, we usually referred to the Top 500 and kept being secretive on the results for Windows HPC Server 2008 as we announced that something good was coming. Well, the wait is over, and if you head over to Volker’s Blog, you can get a great summary on this great Microsoft accomplishment!

One of the attendees from the Costa Rican Airlift event inquired on how he could get to test drive Windows Server HPC Server 2008. Would he need to download a trial version of the HPC OS? Would he need to buy Windows Server 2008 in order to test drive it? The good news is that you do not have to shell out a dime (at this point) if you want to test drive any of these technologies:

• Windows Hyper-V
• Windows HPC Server 2008

How, you ask? Here is what you need to do.

First, go and download a trial version of Windows Server 2008 64-bit. Yes, 64-bit – neither Hyper-V of HPC 2008 works with 32-bit editions of the software. You can use enterprise, datacenter, or standard. I’ve done all my tests with Enterprise.

Once you download the ISO, burn it and install Windows Server. One of the things that I like about these trial versions is that you do not need to input a key in order to test them. When you get to this screen:

Just click Next and click on NO when asked if you would like to enter a key.

This will give you 60 days of trial version. If you are running out of time, then you can extend the 60 day trial time 2 more times (for a total of 180 days).

Ok, that takes care of the base OS / host. You can now install Hyper-V and run your own VMs to run a virtual cluster.

About a week ago I started delivering the LATAM Jumpstart event, which is a 1-day Microsoft event (3 day in Brasil) in which we get to showcase the features of Windows HPC Server 2008 (version 2 of Windows Compute Cluster 2003).  So far, it has been a great experience in both terms of showcasing the new and improved features of the product as well as meeting with very nice and cool people that use or are planning on using this product.

The first event was in Bogota, Colombia – where I must say, are the nicest people I have ever met in my life.   People from Bogota are extremely polite and very very helpful.  The event went well despite the NVidia driver on my MacBook Pro crapping out 30 minutes before the presentations.  I managed to get the machine back online through a series of black magic spells and internal cussing.   It would have been terrible if I had not been able to use the machine as all the demos were running in Hyper-V, and getting everything back together would have taken quite some time.   We had about 60 people show up, which was a great number.   Most of these folks had never used CCS in the past, so it was a great way to let them know what they have been missing

The last 3 days, I’ve been here with Phil Pennington, developer evangelist at Microsoft, delivering a 3-day training/session kind of thing in Sao Paulo.   I had no idea this city was so big, I was quite impressed.   Our attendees in Sao Paulo were really great.   During the labs, we realized that ALL the machines had been imaged from the same source without being syspreped, and that is a very very bad thing when you are dealing with active directory.   The HPC pack could not communicate well with the DC, so we had to carry out a series of tasks such as syspreping ALL the machines and creating a new DC so that things were normal again.  All this while, our attendees were very patient about the whole deal.

Right now I packing up to go to the airport and catch my flight to Santiago, where I will try and get to know a bit better over the weekend.  The bad thing about these events is that they are very close one from the other, so it has been literally impossible to get to know any of the cities I have been to so far.   Oh well, maybe next time we’ll manage to plan it somewhat differently.