Windows HPC Server 2008 R2: HPC Services for Excel

Updated: June 2011

Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

Windows® HPC Server 2008 R2 integrates with Microsoft® Excel® 2010 to help run workbooks and user-defined functions (UDFs) faster by offloading calculations to the cluster. If a workbook contains independent units of calculation, multiple compute nodes can perform the calculations simultaneously. Parallel computation can significantly reduce workbook calculation time and make calculations across larger data sets more feasible. Many complex and long-running workbooks run iteratively—that is, they perform a single calculation many times over different sets of input data. These workbooks might contain complex Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) functions or calculation intensive XLL add-ins. This type of workbook is suitable for cluster acceleration.

The HPC Services for Excel features support a number of programming models that enable Excel workbooks to run in parallel on a cluster. The features include service-oriented architecture (SOA) clients and services that enable developers to quickly convert workbooks to run on a cluster. The client-side and developer features are available in the Microsoft® HPC Pack 2008 R2 client utilities and software development kit (SDK). The cluster-side features are available with the Enterprise Edition of HPC Pack 2008 R2.

In this section

This section contains the following topics:

• What Is Included in the HPC Services for Excel

• How HPC Services for Excel Work

• Requirements for Running Excel Jobs on a Windows HPC 2008 R2 Cluster

• Managing HPC Services for Excel on the Cluster

• Understanding Versioning in HPC Services for Excel (New!)

• Advanced Service Configuration for HPC Services for Excel

• Using the Excel Cluster Connector to Offload UDFs

Additional resources

• White paper: Accelerating Microsoft Excel 2010 with Windows HPC Server 2008 R2: Technical Overview

• Narrated presentation: Introducing HPC Services for Excel 2010

• Video (7 min): Overview and sample scenario for Excel offloading on Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

• Narrated presentation: Best practices on using Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 for Excel 2010

• Narrated presentation: Excel Solution Development

• Narrated presentation: Using HPC Services for Excel 2010 in Insurance and Capital Markets

• Developer resources: Developing Excel workbooks that can run on a cluster

• Developer resources: Windows HPC and Microsoft Excel: Resources for Building Cluster-Ready Workbooks

• Technical library: Windows HPC Server 2008 R2