Connecting to Grex and Transferring data

Connecting to Grex#

In order to use almost any HPC system, you would need to be able to somehow connect and log in to it. Also, it would be necessary to be able to transfer data to and from the system. The standard means for these tasks are provided by the SSH protocol . The following hosts (login nodes) are available:

  • yak.hpc.umanitoba.ca
  • grex.hpc.umanitoba.ca
  • bison.hpc.umanitoba.ca
  • tatanka.hpc.umanitoba.ca

To log in to Grex in the text (or bash) mode, connect to one of the above hosts using an SSH (Secure SHELL) client.

The DNS name grex.hpc.umanitoba.ca serves as an alias for two login nodes: bison.hpc.umanitoba.ca and tatanka.hpc.umanitoba.ca . These two login nodes are the original login nodes, and can be used for accessing the system as well as building software that has to run on older compute nodes (Intel SSE4.2 instructions or earlier).

ssh someuser@grex.hpc.umanitoba.ca

Since early 2021, a new login node, yak.hpc.umanitoba.ca is available to access and build software that uses new Intel AVX2, AVX512 CPU instructions. Yak is not part of the grex.hpc.umanitoba.ca alias, so users would want to specify this host directly. As of 2024, the majority of users would likely use Yak.

ssh someuser@yak.hpc.umanitoba.ca
Please remember to replace someuser with your Alliance user name.

Transferring Data#

Uploading and downloading your data can be done using an SCP/SFTP capable file transfer client. The recommended clients are OpenSSH (providing ssh and scp, sftp command line tools on Linux and Mac OS X) and PuTTY/WinSCP/X-Ming or MobaXterm under Windows. Note that since June 1, 2014, the original “SSH Secure Shell” Windows SSH/SFTP client is not supported anymore.

OpenOnDemand (OOD) Web Interface#

Since October 2021, there is an OpenOnDemand (OOD) Web interface to Grex, currently available at https://zebu.hpc.umanitoba.ca from UManitoba IP addresses. OOD provides a way to connect both in text and graphical mode right in the browser, to transfer data between Grex local machines, and to run jobs.

See the documentation for more details on how to connect from various clients of operating systems: SSH , OOD .