TY - GEN
T1 - Research computing desktops
T2 - 2019 Conference on Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing: Rise of the Machines (Learning), PEARC 2019
AU - Thota, Abhinav
AU - Weakley, Le Mai
AU - Fulton, Ben
AU - Cicada Brokaw Dennis, H. E.
AU - Huber, Laura
AU - Michael, Scott
AU - Snapp-Childs, Winona
AU - Harrell, Stephen Lien
AU - Younts, Alexander
AU - Dietz, Daniel T.
AU - Phillips, Christopher
AU - Zhu, Xiao
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2019/7/28
Y1 - 2019/7/28
N2 - Many members of the current generation of students and researchers are accustomed to intuitive computing devices and never had to learn how to use command-line based systems, which comprise the majority of high-performance computing environments in use. In the 2013-14 time frame, both Indiana University and Purdue university separately launched virtual desktop front-ends for their high performance computing clusters with the aim of offering an easier on-ramp to new users. In the last five years we iterated on and refined these approaches, and we now have over two thousand annual active users combined. Over 75% of those users say that the desktop services are either moderately or extremely important for their ability to use HPC resources. In this paper, we share our experience bootstrapping this new service framework, bringing in the end-users, dealing with runaway success, and making this service a sustainable offering. This paper offers a comprehensive picture of the driving motivations for desktops at each institution, reasons users like desktops, and ways of getting started.
AB - Many members of the current generation of students and researchers are accustomed to intuitive computing devices and never had to learn how to use command-line based systems, which comprise the majority of high-performance computing environments in use. In the 2013-14 time frame, both Indiana University and Purdue university separately launched virtual desktop front-ends for their high performance computing clusters with the aim of offering an easier on-ramp to new users. In the last five years we iterated on and refined these approaches, and we now have over two thousand annual active users combined. Over 75% of those users say that the desktop services are either moderately or extremely important for their ability to use HPC resources. In this paper, we share our experience bootstrapping this new service framework, bringing in the end-users, dealing with runaway success, and making this service a sustainable offering. This paper offers a comprehensive picture of the driving motivations for desktops at each institution, reasons users like desktops, and ways of getting started.
KW - GUI
KW - High performance computing
KW - Remote desktops
KW - Supercomputing
KW - VNC
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85071007884
U2 - 10.1145/3332186.3332206
DO - 10.1145/3332186.3332206
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85071007884
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
BT - Proceedings of the Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 28 July 2019 through 1 August 2019
ER -