Help:ARCC

The UCF Advanced Research Computing Center (ARCC) provides research computing services to the UCF research community, including hosting the Stokes and Newton High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters. This page contains help information related to ARCC Resources.

Accounts

User accounts are available for all Faculty involved research as well as for course instruction. All research accounts for students and non-faculty staff must be approved by the faculty Principal Investigator (PI) for the project. Instructors may apply for course accounts, where an instructor account and student accounts will be created. It is highly recommended to apply for course accounts well in advance, before the beginning of the semester.

Registering for an Account

Users must read the ARCC New User Agreement. Filling out the registration form implies acceptance of the agreement. To apply for a normal user account for research use, fill out the New User Registration form. Instructors may apply for course accounts by filling out the Course Accounts Request Form.

Connecting to ARCC Systems

The primary interface to ARCC systems is via the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. SSH is a versatile protocol used for accessing the command line shell on remote systems, as well as other capabilities including: file transfer (SCP/SFTP/rsync/sshfs), remote TCP port forwarding, and X11 (graphical interface) forwarding. The ARCC does not provide external filesystem access via other mechanisms such as CIFS/SMB/Samba (Windows File Shares) or Network File System (NFS). Massive data transfer, particularly between the ARCC and other HPC facilities, is available via Globus GridFTP.

SSH

Exact configuration will depend on the client operating system and software. One most be connected to the UCF network via Ethernet, UCF_WPA2, or the VPN if off campus. Connection is not possible on UCF_Guest or eduroam Wi-Fi networks. Those networks are only for visitors to UCF.

Basic Connection Information

• Stokes
  • hostname: stokes.ist.ucf.edu
  • port: 22 (default port for ssh)
• Newton
  • hostname: newton.ist.ucf.edu
  • port: 22

Authentication

The ARCC does not support password-based authentication to the clusters. Instead, SSH key pairs are used. Information about generating such key pairs is available at Help:SSH Keys.

Example user config file for OpenSSH

The following is a sane basic configuration file that will store connection parameters for accessing the Stokes and Newton clusters. If it doesn't already exist, this can be saved in a new file ~/.ssh/config. If you already have a config file, be careful not to clobber it and lose any existing settings! There are a few edits you will need to make before you can use the file.

#See ssh_config(5) for details.

#Settings for all connections
host *
     ControlMaster auto #Allow multiple sessions to the same host to share a single connection
     ControlPath ~/.ssh/%C.socket #Specifies name and location of connection state files
     UseKeychain yes #This only has an effect on macOS. Saves passwords securely in Keychain Access.

#Settings that apply to both Stokes and Newton
host stokes newton
     User <username> #Replace <username> with your username.  This is typically first initial+surname. example: John Doe's username is jdoe
     IdentityFile <file> #<file> is the path to the SSH *private* key used for authentication

#Settings specific to Stokes
host stokes
     hostname stokes.ist.ucf.edu

#Settings specific to Newton
host newton
     hostname newton.ist.ucf.edu