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Grouping Compute Nodes

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Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008

A node group is a named collection of compute nodes. Creating custom node groups allows you to monitor, manage, and diagnose all the nodes in a group at once. Nodes can belong to more than one group. You can specify node groups in job templates to help manage cluster resources. Node groups also allow users to submit jobs to a particular set of nodes, or to an intersection of node sets.

There are three default groups: HeadNodes, ComputeNodes, and WCFBrokerNodes. Which of these groups a node belongs to is determined by the role of the node, which you initially set when you install HPC Pack 2008. For more information, see Understanding Node Roles.

The following procedure describes how to group compute nodes in HPC Cluster Manager. For information about using HPC Cluster Manager, see Overview of HPC Cluster Manager.

To group compute nodes

  1. In Node Management, in the Navigation Pane, click Nodes.

  2. In Heat Map or List view, select one or more nodes.

  3. Right-click your selection, point to Groups, then click New Group.

  4. In the Add Group dialog box, type a name and a description for the new group.

  5. Click OK to join the selected nodes to the new group. The new group appears in the Navigation Pane under By Group.

  6. Assign nodes to a group:

    Right-click one or more nodes, point to Groups, then from the list of groups, select the group that you want the node to join.

  7. Remove nodes from a group.

    Right-click one or more nodes, point to Groups, then from the list of groups, clear the check mark next to the group from which you want to remove the node. Note that if you select more than one node at a time, only the groups that apply to all of the selected nodes are indicated with a check mark.

Note

In the Navigation Pane, click By Group to see a list of node groups in the views pane, and to edit the name or description of your custom groups. Click a group to see group properties and the list of member nodes in the Details Pane.

Additional considerations

  • The Node Groups job property can list one or more node groups. The job can only run on nodes that are members of all listed groups. For example, if you list the groups “Have Application X” and “Have Big Memory”, the node must belong to both groups.

  • To open HPC Cluster Manager, click Start, point to All Programs, click Microsoft HPC Pack, and then click HPC Cluster Manager. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.

Additional references