Release Notes for HPC Pack 2016

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These release notes address late-breaking issues and information for the high-performance computing (HPC) cluster administrator about Microsoft HPC Pack 2016.

Download and install Microsoft HPC Pack 2016

HPC Pack 2016 is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. After the download, please save the installation files to your local machine (or machines) that will be set up as a cluster head node.

Known issues

  • Head node installation may fail if the installation package is located on a network share

    Before you install the head node, you must copy the installation package to a local folder and run Setup.exe. If you run Setup.exe from a network share to install the head node, the installation may fail when creating the Service Fabric cluster. This issue only happens for head node setup. For other roles (including “Prerequisites for a new head node”), you can still install from a network share.

  • Head node installation may fail if the installation files are blocked    The installation package downloaded from Microsoft Download Center may be blocked by your operating system for security reasons. If you extract the installation zip file package without unblocking, the extracted installation files may be blocked as well. In this case, the head node installation will fail when installing the Microsoft Service Fabric cluster.

    To fix this issue, unblock the installation zip file in the file Properties, as shown in the following figure. Then, extract to a new folder, and run Setup.exe from the new folder again.

    Unblock the installation zip file.

  • Head node installation may fail on Windows Server 2016 Anniversary edition if secure boot is enabled

    Due to an issue with the Service Fabric lease layer driver, if your head node machines run Windows Server 2016 Anniversary edition with secure boot enabled, the HPC Pack head node installation may fail when creating the Service Fabric cluster. The workaround is to disable secure boot on all head node machines and install again.

  • The installation stops because of a reboot on a computer without Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 (or above) installed

    Microsoft HPC Pack 2016 has a dependency on Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1. If your computer has no Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 (or above) installed, HPC Pack tries to install it and reboot the computer after the installation. In this case, you can run the Setup.exe again to continue the HPC Pack installation after reboot.

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 installation fails on Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1 without KB2919355 installed

    If you are installing HPC Pack 2016 on Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1, KB2919355 must be installed before installing Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1.

  • Upgrade and migration from an earlier version of HPC Pack are not supported

    Because HPC Pack 2016 uses a completely different high availability infrastructure than ealier versions, it is not supported to upgrade or migrate an existing HPC Pack 2012 R2 (or earlier) cluster to HPC Pack 2016.

  • The head node role is not allowed on a domain controller

    You cannot install the HPC Pack 2016 head node in a domain controller. This is because the HPC Pack head node runs in the context of a Service Fabric cluster, which cannot be deployed in a domain controller.

  • Bare metal and iSCSI compute node deployment options are not currently supported

    These options are planned for a later update.

  • Excel UDF offloading is currently not functional

    This will be addressed in a later update.