HPC, Virtualization and Random Thoughts
AI goes mainstream in the insurance industry
An interesting post from Milliman notes how machine learning techniques are gaining favour in...
Date: 03/09/2017
Milliman - Another Aspect
Milliman's story has several facets, as they have been using Azure extensively. Please check...
Date: 07/12/2015
Milliman - an Azure Case Study
Milliman – Cloud Innovators in the Life Insurance Industry Milliman is a great example of a...
Date: 07/12/2015
CentOS cluster in Azure - Part 1
I have been working on Azure Resource Manager templates for a while. They are an interesting way to...
Date: 05/26/2015
DFS in Azure
Often we want to use Azure's scalable storage to deploy file servers. For geographically...
Date: 02/17/2015
How Many Cores for the Job?
That is quite a common question. Experienced systems engineers have accumulated knowledge over the...
Date: 09/29/2014
Generic Resource Scheduler for Azure
GeReS (Generic Resource Scheduler) for Windows Azure is now available as a beta release on Codeplex....
Date: 01/14/2014
Python and Azure VMs
I have been experimenting lately with the Azure SDK for Python, in particular with the service...
Date: 06/13/2013
Using CloudBlitz to Submit Jobs
In the second post about Cloudblitz (https://cloudblitz.codeplex.com) we'll examine how to use it to...
Date: 05/16/2013
Cloudblitz: A Tool to Deploy HPC Clusters in Azure
I'm happy to announce the availability of Cloudblitz, a tool (framework) to deploy HPC clusters in...
Date: 05/13/2013
Endpoints, firewalls and other annoyances
When you deploy a HPC cluster on Azure, you typically want to run some application in it besides...
Date: 01/05/2012
Getting data and applications to / from Azure
After Wenming’s post on deploying an azure hpc cluster with powershell, I have been looking for an...
Date: 12/13/2011
SQL Server in Windows Azure
It is certainly possible to run SQL Server 2008 R2 in Azure virtual machines, but keep in mind that...
Date: 09/09/2011
Azure Connect - a vpn between Azure and your machines
Azure Connect is a service that lets you establish a vpn tunnel (for want of a better word) between...
Date: 04/18/2011
Azure billing clarification
A quick clarification: Azure allocates resources to your role as long as it is deployed, whether it...
Date: 03/14/2011
Put a VM on Azure
I have summarized here all the steps you need to take in order to deploy an Azure VM. Step 1: Get...
Date: 03/12/2011
The Hyper-V Cloud - no clusters?
Microsoft has recently published a set of guides to build your own private cloud solution using...
Date: 11/24/2010
Patches and KB articles for Hyper-v R2
I'd like to share with you some tips to mitigate a few frustrating intermittent problems with...
Date: 11/19/2010
Live Migration, Cluster Shared Volumes & Networks
The recommendation for people setting up live migration clusters is to isolate different kinds of...
Date: 10/01/2009
P2V with SCVMM – a quick tip
System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) has been offering a relatively simple way of doing...
Date: 07/21/2009
VHD Boot
With Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 you get the opportunity to boot directly from a vhd file. The...
Date: 07/14/2009
A Free Book on Microsoft Virtualization
Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions from Microsoft Press is available as a FREE...
Date: 03/12/2009
Updated Infiniband on Server 2008 Paper
I have finally updated my notes on the installation of Infiniband on Windows Server 2008. They now...
Date: 03/02/2009
Faking Networks
On a Windows HPC Server 2008 head node, that is... 1. No Infiniband on the head node In many cases...
Date: 02/23/2009
Live Migration in R2
I've got a lot of questions about Live Migration in 2008 R2. Rather than writing a long post on it,...
Date: 02/12/2009
Turning hyper-v on and off
I use hyper-v on my laptop. When I know I don't need VMs for the day, I can squeeze a bit more...
Date: 12/07/2008
What is new in virtualization with Windows Server 2008 R2?
There are some quite interesting improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 (what was wrong with W7 as a...
Date: 11/12/2008
Upgrading from an evaluation version
I have received a few questions about upgrades from the evaluation version that you can download...
Date: 11/03/2008
Proxies and Compute Nodes
You’ve prepared your templates, configured your network, your firewalls and everything you could...
Date: 10/22/2008
Upgrading to HPC Server 2008 RC1
Well, there is no upgrade path, so the quickest way is to re-image. Download the RC build of the HPC...
Date: 07/22/2008
I'll be there in 2 microseconds!
Fantastic news! Mellanox has released the beta 2 version of their WinIB 1.4 stack, which works with...
Date: 06/19/2008
Teched session on HPC in top 20!
Phil Pennington and I presented a session on cluster performance optimization at Teched 2008 in...
Date: 06/18/2008
How fast is this thing, really?!
Microsoft entered the HPC market a couple of years ago with a value proposition based on ease of...
Date: 06/18/2008
A Hybrid OS Cluster Solution
Thomas Varlet, of Microsoft France, and Dr. Patrice Calegari, of BULL SAS, have written an excellent...
Date: 06/03/2008
UK HPC User Group Meeting
The UK HPC user group is meeting in London on June 26th, for what promises to be an interesting day...
Date: 06/02/2008
Webcasts Again!
Hey all,I'm doing another series of webcasts. 2 of them have already been aired, two more will...
Date: 05/23/2008
Affinity
Did you notice that the latest CTP has introduced a new option for mpiexec? Using mpiexec -affinity...
Date: 05/12/2008
4x4 and other quick tips
I've recently been involved in a simple benchmarking exercise. Here are a few quick "rules of thumb"...
Date: 05/07/2008
HPC & Movies
In my last post I investigated how HPC can be used to build UFOs. This time, I've learned to my...
Date: 05/01/2008
Interested in HPC? How about UFOs?
To many people HPC is like UFOs: We there's somebody somewhere, but we don't really know what...
Date: 03/21/2008
Infiniband on HPC Server 2008 - again
After I published a document about the installation of Mellanox Infiniband on Server 2008, I have...
Date: 03/18/2008
HPC Server 2008 webcasts - again!
Hello again,I'll be doing a series of webcasts soon, hopefully on the feature-complete beta 2 of HPC...
Date: 03/17/2008
Free Software from Microsoft? I cannot believe it!
But it is true! We have about 20 not-for-resale copies of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 SP1....
Date: 03/04/2008
Mellanox Infiniband on HPC Server 2008
One would assume that Infiniband on Windows is just going to be as easy as any other plug and play...
Date: 02/28/2008
HPC "Jumpstart" in Washington DC
We're organizing a 1-day introduction to Windows HPC Server 2008 in Washington, DC on March 18th...
Date: 02/27/2008
Hyper-V and Server 2008 RTM
With general availability of Windows Server 2008 Microsoft ships the beta 1 release of Windows...
Date: 02/21/2008
HPC Server 2008 screencasts available
I had promised that I would do a series of screencasts illustrating different aspects of HPC Server...
Date: 02/13/2008
Windows Server 2008 High-Availability Clusters
It is no secret that HPC Server 2008 will offer the option to make the head node of a HPC cluster...
Date: 01/22/2008