Windows HPC WCF Integration Video
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This four-part video series, titled "Building HPC SOA Applications Using WCF and Windows HPC Server 2008," provides a thorough description and several demonstrations of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) programming model for high-performance computing (HPC) applications, explaining the architecture and the manageability of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) broker structure it relies on. Throughout the series, we explore the ways in which Windows HPC Server 2008 delivers a reliable, scalable, secure, and manageable platform for HPC SOA applications.
The series begins with a description of the applications to which the SOA programming model is targeted, including Monte Carlo simulations and Microsoft Office Excel add-in calculations. The first video shows a side-by-side comparison of serial and parallel programming models that illustrates the differences between the two. It then discusses the benefits of the SOA model in terms of the three main job submission tasks: building, running, and managing.
The second video then shows in detail how to SOA-enable an application by encapsulating the core calculation logic as a service, building the client application, and then optimizing the data movement for scalability. Next, the Videos1 step through a demonstration of building an SOA HPC application: creating a service in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, deploying the service, and creating a client. The Videos1 then cover the steps involved in running an application on the cluster, including creating a session, creating a proxy, adding an HPC configuration file, deploying the service to the cluster (which requires copying the service DLLs and registering the service), and running diagnostics to verify that the service was installed on the compute nodes. The role of the broker nodes and the tools available for IT administrators, such as the node heat maps and event logs, are also discussed.
These procedures and techniques are illustrated with a detailed, real-world example: generating an Asian options pricing sheet using the Monte Carlo algorithm. Finally, the series concludes with a selection of performance tips and recommendations, a discussion of SOA application management, and a demonstration that highlights manageability features.