HPC Cluster

The High Performance Computing Cluster (or HPC Cluster) is essentially a large cluster of computers which we use here at the DCCN to do analyses.

How to Access the HPC Cluster

If you are using a DCCN-issued PC, the necessary softwares should already be downloaded, or can be downloaded from the software center. If you haven’t already done so, you will first need to download EduVPN, PuTTY, and TigerVNC on the computer you are using. You will also need VPN access to the Trigon Network if you are not using a hard-wired connection.

Establish Access to Trigon either via hard-wired connection or via EduVPN (instructions begin under ‘What do i need’)
Use PuTTY to open a VNC Server
Use PuTTY and TigerVNC to open a remote desktop

Note

You can also access the HPC Cluster by simply using the command line without the remote desktop. Namely, this is possible via a terminal emulator such as PuTTY, or any other terminal app. For the sake of brevity we will not demonstrate how to do this.

Key Benefits of Using the HPC Cluster

These computers enable running many different processes in parallel, which massively speeds up your analysis time! They also offer much greater working memory or RAM in comparison to what is often found on the average PC.

The HPC Cluster is also set up to work with High Performance Storage. By accessing the HPC Cluster, you can run analyses as though using a virtual desktop: thus, you don’t have to move or download files onto your local PC in order to use the data outside of the DCCN.

You can reference the HPC wiki to see more potential uses and helpful tutorials.