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Product Information
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 provides a complete, cost-effective high-performance computing (HPC) solution that runs on x64-bit hardware and can be deployed, managed and extended using an integrated and familiar set of Windows tools and technologies. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 enables broader adoption of HPC by providing a rich and integrated experience scaling from personal HPC workstations through to large clusters spanning thousands of nodes.
Developing parallel programmes requires integrated development environments along with support for distributed computing standards. With Visual Studio 2010, developers can build robust and scalable HPC applications easily and quickly. In addition to supporting OpenMP, MPI and Web Services, Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 also supports third-party numerical library providers, performance optimisers, compilers and much more.
Documents & Downloads
» Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Datasheet
New Features
What's new highlights in Windows HPC Server 2008 R2
HPC Services for Excel 2010
Execute Excel calculations on an HPC cluster in a manner transparent to end users:
- Using Excel as a Cluster SOA client - write custom code to run Excel calculations on a HPC cluster
- Run User Defined Functions (UDFs) - execute UDFs in parallel on compute nodes
- Run entire Excel Workbooks - run multiple long-running and iterative Excel 2010 Workbooks in parallel on compute nodes
New support for Workstation nodes
Take advantage of idle Windows 7 workstations by using them as temporary compute nodes:
- Control the time of day and days of the week that Windows 7 desktops are available for running compute jobs
- Workstation owners can control what privileges are available to HPC jobs
- Manageable as regular compute nodes using the HPC cluster manager
Develop business critical SOA applications
Develop highly available SOA applications:
- Durable sessions - decouple requests and responses and develop re-attachable and durable SOA sessions that can survive broker node failures
- High Availability Broker Nodes - automatic fail-over across broker nodes in the event of hardware failures increases the reliability of applications
- Finalization hooks - add logic to perform a clean-up before a service exits
- Service-balanced scheduling policy - ensures that as many jobs are started as soon as possible so important jobs are not staved behind a few large resource-intensive jobs
Improved scalability and performance
A range of new features help to improve the performance and scalability of your HPC applications:
- Numerous performance improvements mean performance of Windows HPC clusters rival those of Linux HPC clusters
- Scale beyond 1000 nodes and use the Heat map to show the status of many nodes without scrolling or paging
- Access hundreds of ISV applications and open source software tuned for optimal performance
- Supports RDMA over Ethernet (iWARP) from Intel and RDMA over infiniband quad data rate (40Gbps)
- Optimisations of shared memory implementations for the new Intel 'Nehalem' processors
Enhanced management, diagnostics and reporting
Improve the management, diagnostics and reporting of HPC applications and clusters:
- A new customisable console displays Deployment, Job and Task progress
- The new Heat map provides colour-coded status displays of up to a 1000 node cluster without scrolling
- The extensible diagnostics and troubleshooting framework allows customisable diagnostics tests in any programming or scripting language
- iSCSI network boot provides support for diskless compute nodes enabling centralisation of storage for improved consistency
- Dual boot clusters enable both Windows and Linux HPC applications to be run at the same time on the same cluster
- Extensible reporting infrastructure lets you capture and report custom error messages, status, usage data and more.
Licensing
Both Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite and Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Edition are licensed solely for running clustered HPC applications.
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite is licensed per server. The software is licensed based on the number of instances of server software that you run. You may run, at any one time, one instance of the server software in one physical operating system environment and one instance in one virtual operating system environment on the licensed server.
If you run both permitted instances at the same time, the instance of the server software running in the physical operating system environment may be used only to:
- Run hardware virtualisation software
- Provide hardware virtualization services
- Run software to manage and service operating system environments on the licensed server.
Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Edition, which comes as part of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite, is licensed per server and does not require CALs. While the Microsoft HPC Pack Enterprise and Express do not require CALs, If you are using the pack with a different edition of Windows, such as Windows Server Standard or Windows Server Enterprise, you will need to comply with the licensing programs for that edition of Windows Server.
Editions
Windows HPC Server Suite 2008 R2
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite is comprised of Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Edition and Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 R2 Enterprise - a combination of essential interfaces, utilities, and management infrastructure for creating Windows-based HPC Clusters.
Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Edition
This is a 64-bit Windows Server operating system provided for the purpose of running clustered HPC applications. It is licensed solely for running clustered HPC (high performance computing) applications.
HPC Pack Enterprise 2008 R2
The Enterprise pack is a superset of the freely available HPC Pack Express edition which includes additional capabilities:
- Include underutilised desktops running Windows 7 as part of your overall HPC infrastructure. Head nodes running Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 R2 Enterprise can include Windows 7 desktops that are licensed to run Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 R2 for Workstation
- Use HPC Services for Excel 2010, which provide new ways to speed-up Microsoft Excel 2010 workbooks - such as support for running Excel user-defined functions and Excel workbooks on the compute nodes of a Windows-based HPC cluster.
HPC Pack for Workstation 2008 R2
An optional software licence which enables a Windows 7 desktop to participate in a Windows-based cluster. This enables Windows 7 desktops to act as temporary compute nodes in an HPC cluster. This edition is limited to use with x86 or x64 editions of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate. Note it does not include the operating system deployment capabilities provided in the server-only editions of the HPC Pack.
System Req.
Minimum hardware requirements
- x64 architecture with Intel Pentium/Xeon processors with Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) or AMD Opteron/AMD Phenom/AMD Athlon 64 compatible processors
- Min 512MB RAM (Max 128GB)
- 50GB disk space for set up
- Single system volume required for head and compute nodes and must be a MBR. RAID supported but not required.
- At least 1 Network Interface Card (NIC) is required. If a private network is used, the head node requires at least two NICs, and compute nodes at least one. Each node may also require a high-speed NIC for an application network.
Multiprocessor support
Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Edition and Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard support up to four processors (sockets) per server. Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise supports up to eight processors per server. Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter supports up to 64 processors per server.
Note: HPC Pack 2008 R2 can address up to 64 cores on a single server regardless of edition.
Software requirements
Node operating system requirements
- Head nodes: x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, or HPC Edition
- Compute nodes: x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, or HPC Edition
- Broker nodes: x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, or HPC Edition
- Workstation nodes: x86-based or x64-based processors editions of Windows 7 Professional or Enterprise
- Note: To enable failover clustered (aka High Availability or HA) the operating system for the head or broker nodes must use either Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise or Datacenter editions.
Remote component system requirements
- Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate (x64/x86), Windows Vista Enterprise, Business, Home, Ultimate, Windows XP Professional with SP3 or later (x64/x86), Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, HPC (x64/x86), Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, HPC (x64/x86), Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard, Enterprise (x64/x86), Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition, Standard, Enterprise (with SP2 or later - x64/x86)
SQL Server support
- The cluster head node requires access to a local or remote SQL Server as a data repository. An existing SQL Server 2008 installation can be used, or the HPC Pack 2008 R2 installer will install SQL Express. SQL Server Standard Edition or SQL Server Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition is required for head node failover clustering.