Understanding Configuration Options for the HPC Basic Profile Web Service

Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008

The HPC Basic Profile Web Service configuration file is located in %CCP_HOME%\bin\HPCBasicProfile.exe.config. You can add elements within the <appSettings> tags to define optional configuration settings. If you make changes to the configuration file, you should stop and then restart the service. For more information, see Start and Stop the HPC Basic Profile Web Service.

The following XML example shows the elements you can add within the <appSettings> tags , and their default values:

<appSettings>
   <add key="externalBaseAddress" value="https://<computerName>:443/HPCBasicProfile" />
   <add key=”maxNumberOfActivitiesToReturn" value=”512” />
   <add key=”maxNumberOfNodesToReturn" value=”512” />
   <add key=”clusterName" value=”localhost” />
   <add key="fileStagerExe" value="{CCP_HOME}\bin\HpcBasicProfileFileStager.exe" />
   <add key=”ftpsTrustedDNs" value=”” />  
   <add key=”fileStagerNodeGroup” value=”” />          
</appSettings>

Configuration options for the HPC Basic Profile Web Service

  • externalBaseAddress: Defines the port number and external URL to use when accessing the service. The default URL is based on the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the head node (for example, https://<computerName>/HPCBasicProfile, where computerName is the FQDN of the computer). The default port number for network traffic using the https protocol is 443. Note that if you specify a URL and a port number when you run the script to commission the service, this parameter is added to the configuration file.

  • maxNumberOfActivitiesToReturn: Controls the number of activities to return with the GetFactoryAttributesDocument operation. The default value is 512. The GetFactoryAttributesDocument operation returns details of all the tasks that have run on the Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster. The HPC Basic Profile specification defines a ‘BasicFilter’ element that specifies if activities should be returned. The type of activities that this operation returns can be further defined with the ‘AdvancedFilter’ specification, currently a draft specification from the Open Grid Forum’s HPC Profile Working Group.

  • maxNumberOfNodesToReturn: Controls the number of nodes to return with the GetFactoryAttributesDocument operation. The default value is 512. The GetFactoryAttributesDocument operation returns details of all the compute nodes in the Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster. The HPC Basic Profile specification defines a ‘BasicFilter’ element that specifies if node details should be returned. The ‘AdvancedFilter’ specification defines a ‘DynamicNode’ element which provides further details relating to the compute node’s configuration and running tasks.

  • clusterName: Defines the name of the computer that hosts the HPC Job Scheduler Service. The default deployment of the HPC Basic Profile Web Service in the Microsoft® HPC Pack 2008 is on the head node; therefore, by default, the value of this parameter is ‘localhost’.

  • fileStagerExe: Specifies the executable file that undertakes the file staging tasks. This element allows the cluster administrator to specify an absolute path to an alternative file staging executable that supports protocols that is not supported by default within Windows HPC Server 2008. Sample code relating to the file staging executable is provided in the HPC Pack SDK.

  • ftpsTrustedDNs: Defines which of the certificates that are provided by the remote File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server are acceptable. The value for this element is a space-separated list of distinguished names of the acceptable certificates. For example, to restrict the acceptable certificates to those issued to ‘microsoft.com’ and any ‘edu’ domain, specify:

    <add key=”ftpsTrustedDNs" value=”microsoft.com edu” />

  • fileStagerNodeGroup: Defines the node group that the file stager executable will be constrained to run on. If no node group is specified, and the HPC Basic Profile file staging job specifies a set of resources, the file staging tasks will be constrained to run on the resources specified for the main application task.

Additional references