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Find out about the many reasons to upgrade to the latest version of Windows HPC Server.
Find out what’s new in Windows HPC Server 2008.
Get a side-by side comparison of Windows HPC Server 2008 and its predecessor.
Windows HPC Server 2008 combines the power of a Windows 64-bit Server platform with rich, out-of-the-box functionality to improve the productivity, and reduce the complexity, of your HPC environment. Windows HPC Server 2008 provides a comprehensive set of deployment, administration, and monitoring tools that are easy to deploy, manage, and integrate with your existing infrastructure.
Windows HPC Server 2008 enables broader adoption of HPC by providing a rich and integrated end-user experience scaling from the desktop application to the clusters. A wide range of software vendors, in various verticals, have designed their applications to work seamlessly with Windows HPC Server 2008 so that users can submit and monitor jobs from within familiar applications without having to learn new or complex user interfaces.
Developing parallel programs requires integrated development environments along with support for distributed computing standards. Visual Studio 2008 provides a comprehensive parallel programming environment for Windows HPC Server 2008. In addition to supporting Open MP, MPI, and Web Services, Windows HPC Server 2008 also supports third-party numerical library providers, performance optimizers, compilers, and a native parallel debugger for developing and troubleshooting parallel programs.
Windows HPC Server 2008 allows your organization to accomplish more, in less time, with reduced effort, by leveraging users’ existing Windows skills and integrating with the development and management tools already in use in your enterprise.
Windows HPC Server 2008 can efficiently scale to thousands of processing cores and includes management tools that help systems administrators proactively monitor system health and maintain system stability. Integration with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Microsoft Windows SQL Server provides failover capabilities in the event of system failure.
NetworkDirect is the new Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) interface from Microsoft for high-speed, low-latency networks such as those running on Infiniband, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, and Myrinet. With an architecture that directly bypasses OS and TCP/IP overhead, NetDirect achieves better performance for massively parallel programs that can utilize very low-latency, high-bandwidth, and enables efficient CPU utilization.
Job scheduling supports new SOA workloads.
The HPC Pack job scheduler is multi-core–aware, allowing sophisticated scheduling, by core, by socket, or by server. The job scheduler supports existing policies such as: priority-based first come, first served (FCFS), backfilling, non-exclusive and license-aware scheduling, and also includes new policies for job profiling, preemption, and growing and shrinking of jobs.
The HPC Pack reduces the complexity of integrating with existing clusters by supporting industry standards such as the Open Grid Forum’s (OGF) HPC Profile for job scheduler interoperability. Additionally, the Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA) integrates applications to maximize existing investments while extending UNIX- and LINUX-based applications to Windows systems.
The time and effort for setup and configuration are reduced through the use of system templates. Templates allow an HPC administrator to create standardized system images or apply patches that can be consistently deployed across the cluster.
Operating system images can quickly be deployed using Windows Deployment Services (WDS). Progress can be monitored through the new HPC Pack Administration console.
Windows HPC clusters can be programmatically managed though command-line interfaces, PowerShell, or other scripting languages such as PERL.
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise includes Failover Services. The combination of Windows Failover Services and SQL Server database clustering provide head node redundancy in the event of a hardware failure.
Administrators can create groups based on hardware, software, or networking characteristics. Groups allow for simplified administration and allow optimal utilization by mapping jobs requirements to an appropriate set of servers.
Built-in diagnostic tools allow administrators to quickly identify and diagnose hardware, software, or network problems across the cluster. Additional capabilities such as: automating routine, redundant tasks, and intelligent reporting and monitoring are possible through the use of System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Why Upgrade
