Deploy an HPC Pack cluster in Azure with Microsoft HPC Pack 2016 Update 1

Note:

see Pre-Requisites section on this page before starting your deployment.

You can now deploy a Microsoft HPC Pack 2016 cluster in Azure. Choose one from the following templates and click "Deploy to Azure" button to deploy.

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Following templates are Active Directory Domain integrated

Template 4: Single head node cluster for Windows workloads with new Active Directory Domain

This template deploys an HPC Pack cluster with one single head node for Windows HPC workloads in Active Directory Domain forest. The cluster includes one domain controller, one single head node with local databases (SQL server 2016 Express version), and a configurable number of Windows compute nodes.

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Pre-Requisites:

1. Prepare a PFX certificate

Microsoft HPC Pack 2016 cluster requires a Personal Information Exchange (PFX) certificate to secure the communication between the HPC nodes. The certificate must meet the following requirements: 1.Have a private key capable of key exchange; 2.Key usage includes Digital Signature and Key Encipherment; 3.Enhanced key usage includes Client Authentication and Server Authentication.You can generate a self-signed certificate which meets the requirements with the following commands and export it as a PFX certificate.

For operating system Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016, just run the built-in New-SelfSignedCertificate command as following:

New-SelfSignedCertificate -Subject "CN=HPC Pack 2016 Communication" -KeySpec KeyExchange -TextExtension @("2.5.29.37={text}1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1,1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2") -CertStoreLocation cert:\CurrentUser\My -KeyExportPolicy Exportable -NotAfter (Get-Date).AddYears(5) -NotBefore (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)

For operating system earlier than Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016, you can download the Self-signed certificate generator from Microsoft Script Center. Extract Extract its contents and run the following command.

Import-Module -Name c:\ExtractedModule\New-SelfSignedCertificateEx.ps1
New-SelfSignedCertificateEx -Subject "CN=HPC Pack 2016 Communication" -KeySpec Exchange -KeyUsage "DigitalSignature,KeyEncipherment" -EnhancedKeyUsage "Server Authentication","Client Authentication" -StoreLocation CurrentUser -Exportable -NotAfter (Get-Date).AddYears(5) -NotBefore (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)

2. Upload the certificate to Azure Key Vault

Before deploying the HPC cluster, you shall upload the PFX certificate to an Azure Key Vault as a secret, and remember the following information which will be used in deployment: key vault name, resource group name, secret Id, and certificate thumbprint. More details about uploading certificate to Azure Key Vault please see description of vaultCertificates.certificateUrl, or you can refer to the PowerShell script as below.

#Give the following values
$VaultName = "mytestvault"
$SecretName = "hpcpfxcert"
$VaultRG = "myresourcegroup"
$location = "westus"
$PfxFile = "c:\Temp\mytest.pfx"
$Password = "yourpfxkeyprotectionpassword"
#Validate the pfx file
try {
    $pfxCert = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2 -ArgumentList $PfxFile, $Password
}
catch [System.Management.Automation.MethodInvocationException]
{
    throw $_.Exception.InnerException
}
$thumbprint = $pfxCert.Thumbprint
$pfxCert.Dispose()
# Create and encode the JSON object
$pfxContentBytes = Get-Content $PfxFile -Encoding Byte
$pfxContentEncoded = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($pfxContentBytes)
$jsonObject = @"
{
"data": "$pfxContentEncoded",
"dataType": "pfx",
"password": "$Password"
}
"@
$jsonObjectBytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($jsonObject)
$jsonEncoded = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($jsonObjectBytes)
#Create an Azure key vault and upload the certificate as a secret
$secret = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $jsonEncoded -AsPlainText -Force
$rg = Get-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $VaultRG -Location $location -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if($null -eq $rg)
{
    $rg = New-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $VaultRG -Location $location
}
$hpcKeyVault = New-AzureRmKeyVault -VaultName $VaultName -ResourceGroupName $VaultRG -Location $location -EnabledForDeployment -EnabledForTemplateDeployment
$hpcSecret = Set-AzureKeyVaultSecret -VaultName $VaultName -Name $SecretName -SecretValue $secret
"The following Information will be used in the deployment template"
"Vault Name             :   $VaultName"
"Vault Resource Group   :   $VaultRG"
"Certificate URL        :   $($hpcSecret.Id)"
"Certificate Thumbprint :   $thumbprint"