Dec 29, 2010 13:32 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is offerings customers running the latest two releases of HPC Pack a collection of tools designed to simplify various tasks associated with the high performance computing offerings.

While the Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 and HPC Pack 2008 R2 Tool Pack is not new, the Redmond company has been hard at work improving the set of solutions offered, and HPC customers should make sure that they’re running the latest versions.

Lizard, ClusterCopy, Node XML Editor and Network Troubleshooting Report are the four tools offered in the Tool Pack for HPC Pack 2008 R2 and HPC Pack 2008.

The Network Troubleshooting Report is the latest to be updated, in mid-December 2010.

“The Network Troubleshooting Report contains a set of diagnostic tests that collect and analyze network information in your HPC Pack 2008 R2-based cluster to help troubleshoot network issues,” Microsoft informs.

Before updating the Network Troubleshooting Report, the Node XML Editor was refreshed earlier this year.

With the Node XML Editor Excel file, customers can increase the efficiency with which they add 2008 or 2008 R2-based HPC cluster nodes.

“Simply open the Node XML Editor in Excel and you'll see a simply screen for typing the data you need to add nodes in your HPC cluster. Add a row for each node and save your new Node XML file. Then, in the HPC Cluster Manager, you can import the node XML file using the Add Node Wizard,” the software giant added.

The remaining tools in the pack were both updated simultaneously one month ahead of Node XML Editor.

ClusterCopy can be leveraged in cluster file distribution scenarios. “Simply put your data files on a single file share, use the ClusterCopy tool, and a series of jobs will be created to rapidly copy the files throughout the cluster, using a tree-based copy system,” the company said.

Of course, Lizard was also updated earlier this year. Customers that are running HPC Pack 2008-based / Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters must be familiar with this solution, as it allows them to gage the computational performance and efficiency of their HPC deployments.

“It calculates and reports a peak performance value for your HPC cluster in billions of floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS), and a percentage value for the efficiency that was achieved at peak performance.

“After running Lizard, you can review the performance and efficiency results that were obtained, and optionally save these results and the parameters that were used to achieve them to a file on your computer,” Microsoft said.

The Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 and HPC Pack 2008 R2 Tool Pack is available for download here.