If you’re one of the adventurers trying out the new HPC Server 2008 beta, you might be interested in this post over at PhilPenn’s (sic) MSDN blog. It contains some of his observations about the state of HPCS 2008.
HPC Pack Beta1 was recently announced at the Super-Computing convention in Reno (i.e. “SC’07”). Executing on release milestones with hard dates, as with the convention date, is always a project management night-mare. The task illustrates the classic struggle between time, resources, and features. Generally, features are sacrificed and resources are increased (i.e. the product team works overtime).
Such is the case with HPC Server 2008 beta1. Yes, there are missing features and certain features that present a nice “Easter Egg” surprise for those willing to give the product a spin. Otherwise, the beta generally accomplishes what beta’s are supposed to accomplish. That is, the user community is given a good idea of where the product is headed along with an opportunity to provide feedback that will ultimately positively influence the product.
The post has a growing list of observations on where stuff is and how to get stuff done with the new software.