Access the cluster

There are 3 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 provide forgot password mechanism, in case you have forgotten your login password, please contact your administrator for support.

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 will only be granted when authenticated by a private key, you 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, you will have one dedicated CPU core, 1GB of memory, and a limited bandwidth. It is for you to prepare your software, job script, and data. In case you really need more resources on the login node, 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. Follow the instruction on the web portal to install and configure the CLI client on your local computer. Then execute the below command to SSH without a key.

hc connect

The CLI client supports file sets mounting like with the below command. Details will be covered 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.