Access the cluster

There are 3three ways to access the cluster: web portal, SSH, and CLI client. This article will cover how they authenticate users.

Web portal

You should be able to log in to the web portal https://hpccenter.hk using the provided username and password.

If this is your first-time login, the system will ask you to set up your second factor for authentication. Please install the Google Authenticator app, and follow the instruction to set that up.

Currently, we don't providehave a forgot password mechanism,mechanism. Please get in casetouch with your administrator for support if you have forgotten your login password, please contact your administrator for support.password.

The cluster is integrated with The Hong Kong Access Federation (HKAF). So if you have an HKAF account, just click "login through HKAF" to log in. Extra two-factor authentication is not required.

SSH

You may SSH directly into our cluster at ssh.hpccenter.hk:22 through the SSH servers farm. Our load balancer will connect you to the server with the least connections. Connections willWe only begrant granted when authenticatedconnections by a private key,key. youYou may download your private key from the web portal. Please keep your private key in a safe place and don't share it with others.

Per connection, youYou will have one dedicated CPU core, 1GB of memory, and a limited bandwidth.bandwidth Itper is for youconnection to prepare your software, job script, and data. In caseIf you really need more resources on the login node, please submit a ticket and let us help.

You may also access the file system with your favorite SFTP client.

CLI client

If you find it tedious to keep the private key, you may leverage the CLI client for keyless login. FollowFirst, the instruction onfollow the web portalportal's instructions to install and configure the CLI client on your local computer. Then execute the following command to SSH without a key.

hc connect

The client supports file sets mounting like with the below command. DetailsWe will becover coveredthe details in a later chapter.

hc filesystem-mount -t home -m /mnt/hpc-home

Currently, both sub-commands support Linux and Mac OSX only. Windows is not supported.