14 DAY TRIAL // In mid-November 2009, Microsoft unveiled the first public testing build of its next generation of Windows for supercomputers. Based on the evolution of Windows Server, Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 has been available for download for almost two months, with the company also offering additional resources to help early adopters start test-driving the next iteration of its Windows OS for the high performance computing market. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 is the successor of Windows HPC Server 2008, and as the official moniker implies, has Windows Server 2008 R2 at the core.
Microsoft Windows Evangelist Volker Will enumerated some of the new videos made available by Microsoft on Windows HPC Server 2008 R2: Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1:Excel on the Cluster, Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1:Scheduler Features, Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1: HPC Service Oriented Programming Model, Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1: Performance Analysis and Diagnostics, Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1: Deploying Diskless Compute Notes, Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1:Diagnostics, Windows HPCS 2008R2 Beta1: Monitoring Large Scale Systems, MPI Cluster Debugger Visual Studio 2010 Launch Integration.
The video content is offered courtesy of Microsoft’s Channel9 and users will be able to find three of the videos embedded at the bottom of this article. The Redmond company estimates that HPC Server 2008 R2 will be ready for general availability by the end of 2010. However, at this point in time, Microsoft has not made public a specific availability deadline for the next version of Windows for supercomputers.
The first Beta development milestone of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 has been up for grabs via Microsoft Connect since November 2009. Early adopters that want to start testing HPCS 2008 R2 need only join the Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta and Microsoft will provide them with access to both the builds and docs for the platform.
“Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 enables cluster-based supercomputing based on x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 (32-bit and ia64 hardware is not supported). Windows HPC Server can be used for massively parallel programs (computational fluid dynamics, reservoir simulation) as well as embarrassingly parallel programs (BLAST, Monte Carlo simulations),” Microsoft stated. “The Windows HPC Server is a cluster of servers that includes a single head node, and one or more compute nodes. The head node controls and mediates all access to the cluster resources and is the single point of management, deployment and job scheduling for the compute cluster. It utilizes the existing corporate Active Directory infrastructure for security and account management.”