There are multiple ways you can connect to and interact with our HPC clusters.
This will vary depending on the operating system installed on your computer, i.e. Linux, Mac or Windows.
If your account has already been set up on a cluster, you should be able to login using your University login and password.
Once logged in you are taken to the login node, this is where most users do their work,
from editing input files, to submitting jobs and accessing network storage.
If you don’t know whether you already have access to the HPC Clusters please see Requesting access to HPC
Open OnDemand provides a user friendly web interface for you to interact with and use the HPC cluster.
Simply log in with your usual credentials to get started.
Eureka can be accessed via SSH connection through any standard unix/linux/mac terminal.
Simply open a terminal and connect using the following command:
$ ssh <username>@<hostname>
This table shows the host names for connecting to the different clusters. You will need to use the appropriate hostname in your SSH command
abc123@myhost:~$ ssh abc123@eureka2.surrey.ac.uk
Password:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Welcome to Surrey's Eureka2 HPC Cluster
Based on Rocky 8
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Documentation for HPC users is located at:
https://docs.pages.surrey.ac.uk/research_computing/
Eureka2 can also be accessed via a web GUI:
https://eureka2-ondemand.surrey.ac.uk/
[abc123@login1 (eureka2) ~]$
In order to connect to a cluster on a Windows machine you will require an SSH client. There are several SSH clients available for installation,
we recommend are either PuTTY or MobaXterm.
For Example: to access Eureka using putty you are required to provide Eureka’s hostname eureka2.surrey.ac.uk after which
you will be prompted for a login name and password and you will be taken to a terminal on Eureka2.
This table shows the host names for connecting to the different clusters. You will need to use the appropriate hostname in your SSH client
MobaXterm works similarly and also provides a pseudo Linux terminal on Windows.
This allows you to navigate, interact with your computer as you would do on Linux and enables you to use
multiple standard Linux tools like ssh and rsync. For example, you can then connect to Eureka using the previously mentioned
$ssh<username>@eureka.surrey.ac.uk command (Also shown below).
The RemoteLabs web portal is another way users can connect and interact with Eureka and only requires you to have a web browser.
It enables you access to a remote desktop on Eureka and a browser based terminal.
It can be accessed through the address https://remotelabs.eps.surrey.ac.uk/#/ and log in using your university credentials.
Once logged into RemoteLabs select the relevant connection e.g. Eureka Vis RDP for a remote desktop session Eureka
or Eureka Term for a terminal session on Eureka.
Since Remote Labs allows a low Latency RDP connection using the Eureka RDP Vis option to Eureka which is perfect for visualisation
and use of GUI applications like Matlab, Paraview, Spyder etc especially where X forwarding fails.
It can also save a lot of time if you tend to copy your data to your local desktop to open, this way you can interact with it remotely.
Screenshot of an interactive remote desktop session via remotelabs
Note
The remotelabs web portal is available for use when off campus however
you will need to connect to the Surrey University VPN first to access the site.
There are multiple ways users can connect and interact with Surrey’s clusters when you are working off-campus.
Like when on campus, this will differ slightly depending on if you are using Linux/Mac or Windows.
Generally speaking these all fall under 2 different methods of accessing the cluster remotely.
Using the Universities VPN which will allow you to access the cluster as if you were on campus.
Using the SSH Gateway service which will give you command line/terminal access only.
FTP access is also possible for the transfer of data to and from the HPC Clusters file systems.
If you are using Linux/Mac (or using MobaXTerm’s psuedo-terminal) you should simply need to open a
terminal and connect using the following ssh command $ssh<username>@access.eps.surrey.ac.uk
then from here you can ssh to the cluster you want with the command $ssh<username>@<hostname>.
From Windows using PuTTY, you will need to provide the hostname of the gateway server access.eps.surrey.ac.uk.
Once logged in, use the command $ssh<username>@<hostname> to connect to a cluster.
diagram depicting off-campus connection to the HPC cluster.
FTP access allows for easy copy/move of your files/folders to/from your personal machine and the University resources like the HPC clusters.
If users required FTP/SFTP access to the clusters, this would require the Global Protect VPN to be enabled.
Once the VPN is enabled, below are some good examples of the client software that can be used for FTP/SFTP access.
Please feel free to download one of the below based on the operating system of your personal device.
Please contact IT Services if you have any issues connecting using the below.
