hpcpack

  • Article

Packages, uploads, and downloads files (such as SOA service files, applications, and data) to and from a Windows Azure storage account. hpcpack also helps you mount a VHD drive from the storage account to the Windows Azure nodes.

This command was introduced in HPC Pack 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 and is not supported in previous versions.

Subcommands

Subommand Description
hpcpack create Packages the specified folder or files in a format that can be uploaded to a Windows Azure storage account.
hpcpack download Downloads a package or file from a Windows Azure storage account.

This subcommand was introduced in HPC Pack 2008 R2 with Service Pack 3 and is not supported in previous versions.
hpcpack list Lists the packages that have been uploaded to the specified Windows Azure storage account.
hpcpack mount Mounts a VHD file as a drive on a Windows Azure node, or lists all currently mounted drives on that node.

This subcommand was introduced in HPC Pack 2008 R2 with Service Pack 3 (SP3) and is not supported in previous versions.
hpcpack remove Removes a package from a Windows Azure storage account.
hpcpack unmount Unmounts a VHD file that was previously mounted on a Windows Azure node using hpcpack mount.

This subcommand was introduced in HPC Pack 2008 R2 with Service Pack 3 (SP3) and is not supported in previous versions.
hpcpack upload Uploads a package, file, or VHD to a Windows Azure storage account.
hpcpack view Displays the attributes for a package that has been uploaded to a Windows Azure storage account.
hpcpack /? Displays Help at the command prompt.
hpcpack /help Displays Help at the command prompt.

Remarks

  • When you provision or start a set of Windows Azure nodes in a Windows Azure burst deployment, any OPC files that are on the storage account in the hpcpackages container are automatically deployed to the Windows Azure nodes (even when node instances are automatically reprovisioned by the Windows Azure system).

  • If you upload packages to the hpcpackages container after the Windows Azure nodes are started, you can use hpcsync to manually deploy them to the Windows Azure nodes. Alternatively, you can create different containers in your storage account for files that you want to manage manually or with scripts.

End to end examples

To help understand the workflow, the following steps outline the command sequence you can run to create, upload, and sync an application to a set of Windows Azure nodes that are already deployed. The fourth sample command demonstrates how to open a firewall exception on the Windows Azure nodes for your application (by using hpcfwutil).

hpcPack create C:\AzurePkgs\myApp.zip C:\AppFiles  
hpcPack upload C:\AzurePkgs\myApp.zip /nodetemplate:AzureWorker /relativePath:apps  
clusrun /nodegroups:AzureNodes hpcsync  
clusrun /nodegroups:AzureNodes hpcfwutil register myApp %CCP_PACKAGE_ROOT%apps\myApp.exe

To submit a job that runs myApp.exe on the Windows Azure nodes:

Job submit /nodegroup:AzureNodes %CCP_PACKAGE_ROOT%apps\myApp.exe

To submit a job that includes a Node Preparation task. The Node Preparation task runs on each allocated node and downloads myApp.zip to the allocated Windows Azure Node before running the main workload of the job:

Job new /nodegroup:AzureNodes  
Job add <jobID> /type:nodepreparation “hpcpack download myApp.zip /unpack /account:<accountName> /key:<primaryKey> /targetpath:e:\approot”  
Job add <jobID> e:\approot\myApp.exe  
Job submit <jobID>

For additional examples of uploading and running applications on Windows Azure nodes, see:

Additional references