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.