In order to run parallel MPI applications on a Windows Azure Compute Cluster Service, we must open the firewall for communication between the compute nodes. These steps must be repeated for any application that communicates across nodes.

  1. Open a Remote Desktop Connection to the compute cluster service’s head node role instance.

  2. Use the Remote Desktop Connection to open a Command Prompt window on the cluster head node.

  3. Type the following command to open the firewall on all compute nodes. Replace application_name with the name of your application (e.g. pop.exe) and application_path with the path to your application (e.g.^%ccp_package_root^%pop\pop.exe):

    clusrun /nodegroup:computenode hpcfwutil register application_name application_path

     

    Remember your escape characters

    The caret ‘^’ escapes the percent ‘%’ character and prevents %ccp_package_root% from being evaluated on the head node.

     

  4. If you are prompted for a password, enter your administrator password and enter Y to remember the password.
  5. Wait for the command to finish. All compute nodes should return 0 to indicate success:hpcfwutil_snip1

msdevelLogoThe work was supported by the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism Team.