How to get HPC account?

You can download the HPC form from the NIT Rourkela website (HPC account request form) or collect the form from the DATA Centre server helpdesk team. Please attach a Xerox copy of the employee ID card or student ID card as proof, it is mandatory. After filling out the form, please submit it to the Computer and Information Centre (CIC) Office (LA-119). Once your HPC account is created, you will get an email from the server administrator.

Log in Information:

A.Accessing the system

• To access Sankha HPC you need to “ssh” the master node.
• To access Jamuna HPC you need to “ssh” the login node.
• The master node in Sankha and login node in Jamuna are the primary gateway to the rest of the cluster, which has a job scheduler (called PBS Pro). You may submit jobs to the queue and they will run when the required resources are available.
• Please do not run programs directly on master node in Sankha or login Node in Jamuna. They are used for submit jobs, transfer data.

Remote access from Windows Desktop

Putty is the most popular open source “ssh” client application for Windows, you can download it from www.putty.org. Once installed, find the PuTTY application shortcut in your Start Menu, desk-top. On clicking the PuTTY icon the PuTTY Configuration dialog should appear. Locate the “Host Name or IP Address” input Field in the PuTTY Configuration screen. Enter the user name along with IP address or Hostname with which you wish to connect to the HPC. Click Open.

(e.g. [ username]@192.168.X.XXX) -> For Sankha HPC or, ([ username]@192.168.X.XXX) -> For login node of Jamuna HPC.

Enter your password when prompted, and press Enter. [note- For security reasons the password wont display while typing it.]

Now you are in your home directory on the HPC system.

Similarly you can access HPC (Jamuna) by providing your username and IP address of login Node i.e., 192.168.X.XXX

Remote access from Linux Desktop

Both Mac and Linux systems provide a built-in SSH client, so there is no need to install any additional package. Open the terminal, connect to an SSH server by typing the following command:
ssh [username]@[hostname]
For example, to connect to the Sankha Node, with the username
user1: ssh user1@192.168.X.XXX
You will be prompted for a password, and then will be connected to the server

Similarly for HPC (Jamuna), open a terminal and type ssh [your username]@192.168.X.XXX

B. File transfer

Transferring files between local machine and HPC cluster
Users need to have the data and application related to their project/research work on the HPC Clusters.
File Transfer Tools
WinSCP (Windows installable application):
This popular tool is freely available and is used very often to transfer data from Windows machine to Linux machine. This tool is GUI based which makes it very user-friendly.
Link for this tool is : https://winscp.net/eng/download.php

Provide IP address of HPC (Sankha) or Login node of HPC (Jamuna) in the Host name: field. Port number leave it at default port 22.

In User name and password field provide the username and password emailed to you from hpcf@nitrkl.ac.in email account. Press Login button to login to your home directory.

If you press Login button before providing username and password then you have to provide the same in the next window as shown below.


Press OK
You will get this window where on the left side is your system directories and on the right is your home directory on the HPC server.

You can simply drag and drop files and directories from your system directories to HPC and vice versa.