Building Windows Clusters

Question

I'm a research student and I want to build a windows cluster at home with my laptops to test my parallel codes.

The problem is I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium, not a server edition.

I'm using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and I installed Microsoft HPC Packs with SP1 and able to simulate MPI codes at my localhost without a problem. Now I want to see the real application.

I have 3 other laptops at home and windows 7 starter is installed on them. They don't have visual studio installed because I have only 1 license from the university.

So is there any way to build a windows cluster with these configurations??

Answer 1

No, a Windows cluster will only work with Windows Server Enterprise or above.

To simulate this a good way is to host Windows Server operating systems on virtual machines. A good resource for this is here.

You do need Windows Server licenses to do this, however -- if you have an MSDN subscription you may find that you can get development licenses under that.

Answer 2

I've done it in HyperV a number of times. You'll need to create a domain controller (using Server STD or Enterprise) as well as N nodes that run Server HPC edition (a lightweight/simplified server edition). Easiest thing to setup would be to create a single HPC (VM) that contains your DC, DNS, DHCP, and HPC Head Node/WCF Broker. Then, you can add a few compute nodes (also VMs) (2 or 3 is good enough for testing) using the HPC server edition and be all set.