Preview of 2012 R2 Update 1 and HPC Pack image in Azure and are now available

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We are happy to announce the HPC Pack 2012 R2 Update 1 Preview and HPC Pack VM image in Microsoft Azure are now available.

The HPC Pack VM image is available in Preview in the Azure VM image gallery. For HPC Pack 2012 R2 Update 1 Preview, you can download a copy of all the related documentation, tools and builds from the High Performance Computing Beta Program, on Microsoft Connect. If you haven’t joined this program already, we encourage you to join today! By joining the program you can download pre-release versions, submit ideas for new features, and report bugs.

The key features and fixes in this wave of update preview include:

  1.  Azure VM image of HPC Pack 2012 R2 Update 1 Preview
    1. This image contains the Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter operating system with HPC Pack 2012 R2 Update 1 Preview and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express pre-installed. You can use this image to create the head node of a Windows HPC cluster in Azure.
  2. Deploy and Manage HPC Pack cluster in Azure IaaS
    1. Use HPC IaaS deployment script to deploy HPC cluster using the HPC Pack Image
    2. Use HPC IaaS management scripts to Add/Remove/Start/Stop Azure VM Nodes in HPC IaaS cluster
  3. Windows Azure PaaS Azure Burst Improvements
    1. Detect and support new Azure Role sizes automatically
    2. Support regional VNet (wide VNet).
    3. Start selected Windows Azure nodes
    4. Support deployments in Azure China
  4. Support Microsoft SQL Server 2014
  5. Node Management
    1. Automatically grow/shrink the number of Azure nodes and Azure VMs according to relevant work load
    2. Configure management operation log archive and retention intervals
    3. Script support to move compute nodes, broker nodes, workstation nodes, and unmanaged server nodes to a different cluster or head node
  6. Job scheduling
    1. Finish task operation is added to finish the active tasks directly into the Finished state
    2. Support job level failed task automatic re-queue for application execution failure
    3. Balanced mode SOA job preemption rebalancing interval is shortened.
  7. MS-MPI v5 beta is also included. For more details please see the blog post The Beta release of MS-MPI v5 is now available.

More details about these features and how to apply this update, download the “Release notes” and “What’s new” from the Connect download page.

Important: The image and software are both in a pre-release version for evaluation purposes only, and should not be used in a production environment. Features and behavior can change before the final release.

Please try our latest features and we are looking forward to your feedbacks.