HPC Graphical/Visual Access

Graphical access is not necessary for most of the batch jobs that are running on the cluster. However, there might be some valid reason on why a graphical interface is necessary:

• For debugging purpose: when testing if a code is working properly, some graphical analysis might be necessary

• For graphics-rich applications such as Mathematica, Matlab, Ansys or Schrodinger, you might need to run a smaller set or preliminary calculations to be utilized in the longer batch jobs later.

With these purposes in mind, you can run graphical user interface for HPC using the following options below. However, please bear in mind that graphical access would require higher network bandwidth between your location and the HPC room, so the graphical interface might become sluggish when encountering slow connection. You can try other options to see if the issue is with the connecting tool, or if it is with the network connection.

To run the graphical access, you can use:

OnDemand web portal

There is now an https-based alternative for establishing graphical sessions on the HPC under "Interactive Apps" menu, described at the OnDemand page. 

The portal urls are as follows:
Pioneer:  https://ondemand-pioneer.case.edu
Markov:  https://ondemand-markov.case.edu 

We strongly recommend the use of OnDemand interface for users who are not very familiar with a cluster/Linux environment.

X2Go 

X2Go [1] is an open source terminal server project providing remote access to your desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux etc) and applications. Users can access our HPC cluster using X2Go to have access to one of the following desktop environments:

• • XFCE4

  • Mate

  • KDE

Please follow our tutorial on How to Configure X2Go for more information.

MobaXterm (For windows only) 

MobaXterm is an enhanced terminal application for Windows with native graphical connection, multiple tabs, and file copy window. Users can use MobaXterm to remotely create files and directories and edit them using windows editor like notepad. It also provides multiple connection protocols, such as SSH, SFTP, and RDP to make it easier to establish connections and file transfer.

See HPC MobaXterm Guide for details.

Via Regular X11 Protocol 

(Not recommended if you need fast GUI access)

Finally, you are welcome to use the regular X access via Cygwin/X, putty+XMing, Mac+XQuartz - but they are comparatively slow and you might have issues opening graphics-heavy applications.

Web Transfer via Data Transfer Nodes

Data Transfer nodes are provided to enhance data transfer performance across the campus and with other institutions efficiently. They are connected to the campus network at speed higher than 20 Gbps, which enable large data transfer to proceed in reasonable time.

In general, we do not recommend opening up a browser on the Data Transfer nodes to download or upload data with an external server. Usually https connections are not very efficient for large-scale data transfers, even if they present convenient interface. We strongly recommend using Globus or other parallel file transfer method to optimize the bandwidth. You can open the firefox browser on the data transfer nodes, by establishing a login session to the cluster with graphical support. The browser may be used to navigate to the external server for data download or upload.