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??

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 28 '11 at 22:09

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Your hardware is not fine for build a Microsoft cluster. I suggest you to install VMware Server on your Windows 7 fastest laptop and build a virtual cluster. You will need also Windows Server 2003/2008 Enterprise Edition to install the cluster nodes.

edited Apr 28 '11 at 22:09

user9517

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answered Apr 28 '11 at 10:36

Danilo Brambilla

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so I must obtain Windows Server Enterprise edition. Enterprise edition is not available to students from my university, would standard edition work? – Emre Turkoz Apr 28 '11 at 10:51
Sorry Standard Edition does not support clustering. – Danilo Brambilla Apr 28 '11 at 13:32
@Emre as mentioned you will need Enterprise. If you look into getting access to Dreamspark (and it is very simple) you will get an MSDN account with access to every server OS. – Sam Cogan May 02 '11 at 19:59

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 28 '11 at 09:50

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If you are a student you should be able to sign up fro Dreamspark. This will give you an MSDN licence which will allow you to download and use any MS OS for testing and development purposes, which should apply here.

answered Apr 28 '11 at 09:50

Sam Cogan

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so you say that i need to download windows server, install it then build cluster, right? – Emre Turkoz Apr 28 '11 at 09:58

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 28 '11 at 11:51

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If Windows isn't a strict requirement, a Linux Live CD with cluster support, such as PelicanHPC may work out.

answered Apr 28 '11 at 11:51

Mike Renfro

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it seems like i have to do it in that way - using linux. But I had a dream that using my laptop I could use any windows computer around to execute my code. but it seems impossible for now without server enterprise. Will try linux.. – Emre Turkoz Apr 28 '11 at 12:28

Building Windows Clusters

3 Answers3