Run high-performance computing (HPC) applications on Azure: Review

HBv2 and HC troubleshooting is a reading list, not a broken cluster you get to fix. But it’s all theory—what to look for, rather than giving you a broken config to fix. And that sums up the whole path: it’s a curated tour of Microsoft's own documentation, not a course where you build and troubleshoot a complex MPI application. It's a tour of the components you *would* use for that task.

The content is fresh, which matters a lot in this space. It correctly identifies the key services: CycleCloud for cluster orchestration, Batch for job scheduling, and the different storage tiers like NetApp Files and Managed Lustre. I did appreciate the specific module on choosing a NetApp Files service level, as that’s a real-world decision with significant cost implications.

The “hands-on” aspect is very light, though. The sandboxes let you click through the portal to see where things are, but you don't actually configure a multi-node cluster, submit a non-trivial job, and then diagnose a performance bottleneck. This path gives you the map and the compass, but you have to find your own challenging terrain to practice on. It's useful for someone moving an existing HPC workload to Azure and needing to learn the new service names.