Third Service Pack for HPC Server

A third service pack (SP3) for the Windows high-performance computing (HPC) platform was released in Nov. 2011. In addition to fixes and some performance and management enhancements, HPC Pack 2008 R2 SP3 allows nondedicated servers to be used as part of an HPC installation, simplifies firewall settings if Azure resources are used, improves security for management certificates, and allows finer-grained job scheduling.

Nondedicated Servers as Compute Nodes

HPC Server, a special x64 edition of Windows Server 2008 R2, solves compute-intensive problems on arrays of computers (called compute nodes) under the control of a management server (the head node). Compute nodes can be servers in an HPC cluster, Windows 7 workstations (referred to as workstation nodes, which do not need to be dedicated to the HPC system), or Azure worker nodes (nodes running in a Microsoft data center but scheduled by the on-premises HPC Server). A Windows HPC Server installation requires a Windows Server HPC Edition OS for each head node and an HPC Pack for each compute node. The HPC Pack contains additions (such as cluster job scheduling, management services, and data handling features) needed for a node to participate in an HPC installation.