2. HPC = High Performance Computing
• HPC is Microsoft’s “Big Compute” platform
• Parallel and batch compute capabilities.
• Applications:
• Actuarial sciences.
• Financial Risk Modeling
• Digital content creation, transcoding.
• Genetics research.
3. • Head Node hosts a control panel which allows you
to create cluster configurations.
• The head node sends work the compute node
clusters.
• The work is split up into work units and executed in
parallel.
Typical on premise HPC configuration
HEAD NODE
ON PREMISE COMPUTE NODES
4. Hybrid HPC-Azure configuration
HEAD NODE
ON PREM COMPUTE NODES
AZURE COMPUTE NODES
• Add capacity with worker nodes in the cloud.
• Useful for scenarios such as seasonal bursts
where extra capacity is needed occasionally.
• Its not necessarily about speed, its about
throughput.
5. Azure Compute Node Size
• Use either A8 or A9 class machines.
• Problem sets can be configured to
be processed in parallel across 8 or
16 cores.
• These machines come at an added
cost.
• Managing that resource is
important to controlling $$$ spent.
7. Cluster Manager starting Azure Nodes.
• There’s manual steps
needed to start/stop
jobs.
• These steps can be
automated via
PowerShell
8. Powershell can replace manual interaction.
• Your application can be written to execute Powershell to add
Azure capacity as needed.
• Add nodes to your HPC Cluster dynamically
• Get-HpcNodeTemplate $HpcNodeTemplate -Scheduler $Scheduler | Add-
HpcNodeSet -Quantity $Quantity -Size $Size -Scheduler $Scheduler
• Start or Stop the nodes
• Get-HpcNodeTemplate $HpcNodeTemplate -Scheduler $Scheduler | Start-
HpcNodeSet -Scheduler $Scheduler
• Shut down the nodes when the job is done, don’t waste $$$
with a VM that’s not doing work.
9. Windows Azure Management Libraries
• A Natural .NET Framework that maps cleanly to the underlying REST API
• Introduced late 2013
• Supports the Portable Class Library (PCL).
• Ships as a NuGet Package you install from VS
• Designed to use C# 5 async tasks
• Easy to code with C#
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.Compute;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.Storage;
10. Do cool stuff like create Azure VMs from a desktop.
• Deploy cloud services from your .Net applications
• Eg: Create a VM
internal async Task CreateVM()
{ await _computeManagementClient.VirtualMachines.CreateAsync(
“MyAzureService",
“MyAzureDeployment",
new VirtualMachineCreateParameters
{ RoleName = “MyName",
RoleSize = VirtualMachineRoleSize.ExtraSmall
},
new System.Threading.CancellationToken());
}
11. Summary
• HPC is specialized for certain industries that require massive computing
power and can make use of parallel processing.
• Azure “Burst to cloud” is an effective means to add capacity.
• Automating the starting and stopping of your Azure resources can help
control costs.
• Powershell and/or WAML are 2 ways to develop operational scripts to
automate Hybrid-HPC work management.
