Appendix 2: Configure a Startup Script for Windows Azure Nodes

The following are the general steps for configuring and using a startup script for your Windows Azure nodes:

1. Create a configuration script (for example, startup.bat) that uses environment variables to differentiate nodes and to set different configurations. For more information, see the remaining sections in this topic.
   
   
2. Use hpcpack to package the script and upload it to the Windows Azure storage account that is used for deploying the Windows Azure nodes.
   
   

   Important
   Do not specify the /relativePath parameter when packaging and uploading the startup script. The startup script should only run from the root directory of the Windows Azure nodes.

3. Update a Windows Azure node template to specify the startup script.
   
   

   Important
   To specify the startup script, you must edit an edit an existing node template, or edit a node XML file.

4. Start (provision) the Windows Azure nodes.
   
   The startup script is automatically deployed to the Windows Azure nodes and runs on the nodes.
   
   

You must ensure conformity between the name of the package that you upload to Windows Azure and the name of the script that runs (and that is specified in the node template). Only the naming conventions in the following table are allowed:

You can use the environment variables in the following table, which are set automatically on the Windows Azure nodes, to help configure your startup script:

Environment variable	Description
HPC_NODE_NAME	The name of the Windows Azure node that is automatically configured by Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 – for example, AZURECN-0014.
HPC_NODE_GROUPS	A comma-delimited list of node groups that the node belongs to.Allows the behavior of a script to be specialized for different subsets of the nodes. Note HPC_NODE_GROUPS is set only when the Windows Azure node is first started. The variable is not dynamically updated if the variable is updated and the node is then provisioned again.

The following example is a batch file that configures a firewall rule on a subset of nodes that are identified by the node group Port31337 Server Group. You can adapt this pattern to create startup scripts that perform other tasks.

@echo off
echo %HPC_NODE_GROUPS% | findstr /C: "Port31337 Server Group"
if %errorlevel% == 0 (
echo Creating firewall exception
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="MyRule" dir=in protocol=tcp localport=31337 action=allow enable=yes
) 

The error logs for the startup scripts are listed in the following table. The location of the log files on each Windows Azure node depends on the type of node, as follows:

• Worker nodes.   Log files are in the %CCP_HOME% folder.
  
  
• VM nodes.   Log files are in the %CCP_HOME%\bin folder.