Enabling Remote Debugging
Applies To: Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003
Customers commonly develop custom applications to run on their compute clusters. How developers in your organization develop and debug applications will influence your choice of cluster network topology. If your developers on the public network require direct access to compute nodes for debugging or other operations, select a topology where the compute nodes all have network interfaces to the public network, as in cluster topology scenarios 2, 4, and 5. Some developers will prefer or need to develop and debug on a cluster topology where the compute nodes are isolated behind the head node, as in cluster topology scenarios 1 and 3. In all cases, the compute cluster administrator must be aware of the debugging requirements of your developers when configuring compute cluster topology.
Remote debugging
If developers in your organization request that debugging capabilities be provided on a cluster, the administrator should consider installing Microsoft® Visual Studio® Debugger on any node that the developers use for debugging. If the entire cluster is used for development testing, then all nodes should have a copy of the Debugger installed. If a subset of cluster nodes are made available for testing, the administrator should ensure that a list of debugging nodes is made available to the appropriate developers.
In addition, network access to the debugging nodes from each development computer must be provided. This can be done in various ways, depending on the cluster topology and your network configuration. You can:
Debug compute nodes that have both public and private network interfaces.
Add developers to the cluster as users in those cases where the network topology does not include a public network interface.
Install Visual Studio on the head node if you are debugging clusters that will only be used for testing.
Install one or more development computers on the private network of the cluster.
Application developers should read the Visual Studio product documentation for setup and configuration of the Visual Studio Debugger.