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Windows HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1 Release Notes

  • Article

Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008

These release notes address late-breaking issues and information about this release of Windows® HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1. They contain important information that was not available when the product documentation was written. These notes will help you to install and use this product.

In these release notes:

  • Installing Windows HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1

  • Known issues

Installing Windows HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Be aware of the following items and recommendations before you start installing Windows HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1 to upgrade an existing cluster from Windows HPC Server 2008:

  • Create backups of the HPCClusterService and the HPCReporting databases before installing Service Pack 1. When you install the service pack, new indexes and new parameters for some procedures are added to the HPC databases. Uninstalling the service pack does not roll back the changes to the databases. If the installation fails, you must restore the databases from a backup and follow the additional steps described in Steps to Perform Before and After Restoring the HPC Databases from a Backup.

  • Close all open windows for applications related to the Microsoft® HPC Pack 2008 before you apply the service pack. If you have windows open, such as HPC Cluster Manager, you may be prompted to reboot your computer to complete the installation.

  • Do not apply the service pack during critical times or while a long running job is still running. When you upgrade either a head node or a compute node in a cluster, you may be prompted to reboot the computer to complete the installation.

  • When you apply the service pack to your head node, the files that are used to deploy a compute node are also updated. If you install a new compute node or redeploy an existing compute node, the service pack is automatically applied to that compute node.

  • You can also use the Microsoft Update management feature of the HPC Pack 2008 to apply the service pack to existing compute nodes. To use the Microsoft Update management feature:

    1. View nodes by node template to identify the node templates for the compute nodes that you want to update. For information about how to view nodes by node template, see “View Nodes” in the HPC Cluster Manager Help in the Windows HPC Server 2008 Technical Library (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=124146).

    2. Add the Apply Updates task to the node templates for the nodes that you want to update, and include HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1 in the list of updates that you specify in the Updates parameter. For information about how to add the Apply Updates task to a node template, see “Add the Apply Updates Task to a Node Template” in the HPC Cluster Manager Help in the Windows HPC Server 2008 Technical Library (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=124146).

    3. Run the Maintain node action on the compute nodes. For information about how to run the Maintain action on a compute node, see “Run Maintenance Tasks on Compute Nodes” in the HPC Cluster Manager Help in the Windows HPC Server 2008 Technical Library (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=124146).

    4. Verify that the updates were applied by checking the software version number on the compute nodes. To view the software version number for your compute nodes, you can add the Version column to the node List View in HPC Cluster Manager. The updated version number starts with 2.1 (for example, 2.1.1703.0).

      If the service pack was not applied, verify that your cluster’s updates are coming from a WSUS server and that the HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1 update has been approved by your WSUS administrator.

      1. In the Windows Update control panel, if you see that You receive updates: Managed by your system administrator does not have a link associated with it, then you are currently getting updates from a WSUS server.

      2. Click Check online for updates from Windows Update to see if the service pack appears. If it does, then contact your WSUS administrator and ask them to approve the HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1 update.

      Note that because the service pack stops the HPC services during installation, the provisioning log will not contain information about the service pack being installed.

  • If you have set up a head node that has failover clustering configured, use the following steps to apply the service pack:

    1. Apply the service pack to the active node.

    2. A failover will occur as the node reboots. Ensure that the failover cluster is reporting that the head node is healthy and online.

    3. Ensure that the head node is now running on the other server in the failover cluster, and then apply the service pack to that server.

Known issues

The known issues for Windows HPC Server 2008 also apply to Windows HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1. For information about the known issues for Windows HPC Server 2008, see Windows HPC Server 2008 Release Notes.

The following are the known issues specific to Windows HPC Server 2008 Service Pack 1.

Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1

HPC Pack 2008 Service Pack 1 adds support for SQL Server® 2008 databases. To use SQL Server 2008 as your database for a new HPC cluster, you must:

You cannot upgrade from SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (the version that Windows HPC Server 2008 uses), to the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2008. For this reason, migrating existing HPC clusters to SQL Server 2008 is not supported.