Security Considerations for Network Topologies in Windows HPC Server 2008
Applies To: Windows HPC Server 2008
In a cluster running Windows HPC Server 2008, the network topology is the organization of the physical networks that connect the head node and the compute nodes. There are five network topologies that you can choose from when setting up the physical networks. The topics in this section describe security considerations for the network topologies.
The following topic provides information that can help you assess security considerations as you choose a network topology for your HPC cluster:
The following topic describes an environment variable that relates to the network topology and is important for clusters that run Message Passing Interface (MPI) jobs. By default, if a private or application network is available in an HPC cluster, MPI messages will be passed on one of those networks, and this is more secure than if the messages are passed on the enterprise network. However, the environment variable that controls this might have been changed by an administrator. Use the following topic to confirm that the environment variable for the network mask for MPI messages is specifying a private or application network: