Windows HPC Server 2008: Tools and Extensibility

Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008

This section contains links and information about tools and extensibility for Microsoft® HPC Pack 2008.

Tools

The following tools are available:

Area Name Tool description Documentation Tool download

Data staging

ClusterCopy

Helps you rapidly copy files to and from compute nodes on a Windows HPC cluster.

Includes information about requirements and how to use ClusterCopy to distribute files to cluster nodes or collect files from cluster nodes.

Use ClusterCopy to Move Files to and from Nodes in a Windows HPC Cluster (in this library)

The installation file (.msi) is available on the Microsoft Download center at Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 and HPC Pack 2008 R2 Tool Pack.

Benchmarking

Lizard

Helps you to determine the computational performance and efficiency that can be achieved by your Windows HPC cluster, and establish a list of optimized LINPACK benchmark parameters.

Includes information about how you can use the Express and Advanced tuning modes, and how you can interpret the Lizard results.

Lizard Help (in this library)

The installation file (.msi) is available on the Microsoft Download center at Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 and HPC Pack 2008 R2 Tool Pack.

Lizard was updated on 8/25/2010 to include support for HPC Pack 2008 R2.

SharePoint

HPC Pack 2008 SharePoint Integration Sample

Includes SharePoint Web Parts that provide a job submission interface for an HPC 2008 cluster. You can add the HPC Web Parts to a SharePoint site to provide a Web-based interface for cluster users.

Also includes the source code for the solution file as an example for developers who want to modify the provided Web Parts or develop new Web Parts to access the cluster.

Includes information about the sample Web Parts and system requirements. Also includes steps for deploying the solution file, specifying the head node, creating a SharePoint site that uses the HPC Web Parts, and basic troubleshooting.

Windows HPC Pack 2008 Integration with SharePoint (in this library)

The installation file (.msi) is available on the Microsoft Download center at HPC Integration Sample for SharePoint

Development

HPC Cluster Debugger Tool Pack

Add-in to Visual Studio® 2008 SP1 that helps developers debug Message Passing Interface (MPI) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) applications that are running on a Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster.

Includes information to help you launch and configure the MPI and cluster-SOA debuggers that are included in the debugger tool pack, and detailed walkthroughs with sample code.

Web version

Downloadable version

The installation file (.msi) is available on the Microsoft Download center at HPC Debugger Add-on for MPI and Cluster-SOA.

Extensibility

The following guides and topics are available for extending functionality of your HPC cluster:

Area Document Description

Job scheduling

Creating and Installing Job Submission and Activation Filters in Windows HPC Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guide

You can write custom filters to provide additional scheduling policy control for jobs that are submitted to your cluster. This guide provides information about when to use custom filters, guidelines for writing a filter application, C# code samples, and then walks through the steps for adding the filter to the appropriate cluster-wide parameters in Windows HPC Server 2008.

Node monitoring

Customize Metrics Collection in Windows HPC Server 2008

You can modify or remove existing performance metrics or add new metrics to the metric collection that is available for monitoring the nodes in your cluster. As an example, this topic describes how to add a new metric that displays CPU idle time.