Microsoft has debuted a limited time offer designed to help customers running Windows for Supercomputers test the performance of their HPC cluster. Phil Pennington, Windows Server Technical Evangelist, is inviting users to access a new tool developed by a member of the Microsoft High Performance Computing team for free. Pennington failed to indicate for how long the offer, made last week, would still be valid, and those interested will have to contact Microsoft directly.

"Test your sanity. Actually, not you personally. But rather the sanity of your HPC cluster. How do you know that its performance is up to par? It's not an easy task without a toolkit. How about trying a custom toolkit created by an HPC industry guru? For a limited time (of course), we'll send you Frank Chism's 'uSane' toolkit for free! Even better, Frank himself will illustrate how to use it in detail (or at least a reasonable facsimile of Frank)," Pennington stated.

In order to get free access to the uSane toolkit, customers will have to sign up as a community member of WindowsHPC.net. Next, Pennington has to be contacted directly via the Windows HPC Server 2008 blog with the registration name of those interested in the toolkit. "I'll reply with download instructions for the uSane Toolkit. No pressure, no technical support either... but hey!... It's a good toolkit for free," Pennington concluded.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is hard at work wrapping up the successor of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. The Release Candidate 1 build of Windows HPC Server 2008 was dropped at the end of June 2008, and the Redmond company's latest iteration of the Windows platform for the high performance computing marketing is approaching the finish line at fast pace. Still, for now, access to the RC1 bits of Windows HPC Server 2008 is permitted only via Microsoft Connect.