Maintaining Nodes

  • Article

Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008

Node templates have four phases: provisioning, configuration, deployment, and maintenance. You can apply the maintenance tasks specified in a node’s template by taking the node offline, then using the Maintain action on the node. For example, you can use the Post Install Command task to install applications on compute nodes, and you can use the Apply Updates task to apply software updates.

You can add maintenance tasks to a node template, or modify existing tasks by using the Node Template Editor. For more information, see Edit a Node Template.

Note

You can also use clusrun commands to run a command-line command in parallel across a set of nodes in the cluster. For more information, see Running Clusrun Commands.

Node template maintenance tasks

The following table lists the maintenance tasks that you can add or modify on a node template and the properties that are associated with each task.

Task Name Task Description Properties

Post Install Command

Runs a command on the compute node after HPC Pack has been installed.
  • ContinueOnFailure (optional): if True is selected, the maintenance task will not fail if the command fails to run successfully. If False is selected, the maintenance task will fail if the command fails to run successfully.

  • Timeout (optional): specifies the number of seconds before the command times out. If this property is not specified, the default timeout value is 60 seconds.

  • WorkingDirectory (optional): specifies the folder where the command runs.

  • Command (required): specifies the command to run. This command runs using the installation credentials that were provided during the configuration process of the head node.

Activate Operating System

Activates the operating system on the compute node.
  • None

Apply Updates

Applies updates to the compute node from Microsoft Update or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
  • Patches (optional): specifies the list of updates that will be applied to the compute node.

  • Categories (required): specifies the type of updates that will be applied to the compute node.

In this section