First steps

This page describes all general steps that a user needs to perform to be able to start working with SURF Research cloud:

Contents:

  1. Creating storage
  2. Creating a workspace
  3. Pausing, Resuming, Deleting a workspace
  4. Logging in to your workspace
  5. Getting data inside your workspace

Research Cloud portal

When you have completed an onboarding procedure, you can login using the following link:

Research Cloud portal

Create storage volume

Why a storage volume?

In most cases you need to create a storage volume before you create a workspace. A workspace has limited storage and is temporary; all data stored on the workspace itself are deleted when a workspace is deleted. You can see a storage volume as a USB stick that you can attach to a workspace. A storage volume is persistent, so when you remove a workspace, all data on the storage volume will remain there. Storage volumes have good performance and are suitable for I/O-intensive computing tasks.

How to create a storage volume?

In the Research Cloud portal:

  • Click ‘Create new storage’
  • The Wizard will guide you through the steps, some tips:
  • Choose Storage HPC
  • Choose the Collaborative Organization of the project for which you want to create the storage volume
  • Choose the wallet with which you ‘pay’ for the Storage Unit
  • Choose the size. It is not possible to resize it later on, so don’t choose too small, but also don’t choose too large because it will cost more credits.
  • Give your storage volume a descriptive name so you can recognize it later on (recommended: use one or two words separated with and underscore)

Where can I find the storage volume?

When you created a workspace and chose to attach a storage volume to the workspace (see below), the storage volume can be found under the directory path: /data Typically you want to create a project folder on the storage volume (e.g. /data/my_storage/my_project).

Create a workspace

A workspace can also be called a ‘Virtual Machine’ or a ‘Server’. It is a temporary ‘remote’ machine that you can login to and that has you can use to perform analyses or model runs. You ‘pay’ for the machine with the credits from your wallet. The more compute power you select the more credits it costs and the sooner your wallet will be empty.

See here for detailed information on how to create a workspace.

Pausing, Resuming, Deleting a workspace

You always need a wallet to create a workspace, by default a workspace can only be paused, resumed and deleted by the one that has created it. You can use SRAM to give persons permission to PAUSE, RESUME and DELETE a workspace that is created by someone else. It is also possible to share a wallet with a member of your CO in SRAM. See Add collaborators to existing project.

Getting access to your workspace

There are several ways to login to your workspace.

Browser access to a desktop environment

When?

For workspaces that provide a graphical interface to a desktop environment. For instance: Ubuntu Desktop, Python Workbench, Matlab. See the workspace catalog for an overview of Catalog Items that provide this kind of access.

For these workspace types, this is what you will see when you click the yellow “Access” button:

How?

For these workspaces, you will need to setup a Time Based Password for your Research Cloud account.

Steps:

  1. Click the yellow “Access button” for your workspace.
    • You will be taken to your workspace’s address, e.g. (https://workspacename.src.surf-hosted.nl).
  2. You will see a prompt asking you to login to the Linux workpace.
  3. As a username, enter your Research Cloud username (not your Solis ID).
    • You can lookup your username in the Research Cloud portal under the “Profile” tab.
  4. As a password, enter your time-based (TOTP) password for Research Cloud (not for your Solis ID).

Once you are logged in, you will be presented with a desktop environment in your browser. The environment used on ResearchCloud is a lightweight desktop called Xfce. See here for help with it.

Browser access to a webapplication

When?

Many catalog items provide you with a webapplication that can be accessed from your browser. For instance: Jupyter Notebooks, RStudio. See the workspace catalog for an overview of Catalog Items that provide this kind of access.

How?

There are two different forms of browser-based access to webapplications on Research Cloud:

Webapplications that support Single Sign-on.

These will present you with the normal login flow (including two-factor authentication) for your institutional login. That means Solis ID for UU students and staff, but collaborators from other institutions will use their own.

Since you are often already recently signed in to your institutional login to enter the Research Cloud, you will often not even need to authenticate again! Simply click the yellow “Access” button for your workspace.

Webapplications that require a time-based password

For these workspaces, you will need to setup a Time Based Password for your Research Cloud account.

Steps:

  1. Click the yellow “Access button” for your workspace.
    • You will be taken to your workspace’s address.
  2. You will see a prompt asking you to login to the Linux workpace.
  3. As a username, enter your Research Cloud username (not your Solis ID).
    • You can lookup your username in the Research Cloud portal under the “Profile” tab.
  4. As a password, enter your time-based (TOTP) password for Research Cloud (not for your Solis ID).

Remote Desktop Protocol

When?

This method can be used for most Windows Server workspaces, and any other workspaces that have an URL starting with RDP:// when you click on the workspace in the research cloud portal.

How?

To be able to login via RDP you need to setup a Time Based Password for your Research Cloud account.

You need an Remote Desktop client to be able to connect via RDP. On a Windows and MacOS PC you can use an application called ‘Remote Desktop’, on Linux we recommend ‘Remmina’.

The username that you need to type when you want to access the workspace can be found under the ‘Profile’ tab in the Research Cloud portal. The password to fill in is the Time based password (aka TOTP password) from the authenticator app on your mobile phone.

SSH

When?

For some workspaces this is the only option to login to your workspace. These are typically command line only workspaces (e.g. Ubuntu 20.04 command line).

Since connection via SSH also works for most other workspace types, it could also be a useful option in some other scenarios, e.g. when you want to copy a file from your laptop to the workspace.

How?

The research cloud documentation provides instructions on how to set up SSH for research cloud.

To connect to the workspace from a Windows computer you need specific software to use a ‘shell’ (also known as ‘terminal’), examples include Git Bash, PuTTY and MobaXterm. If you need to install something new, we would recommend MobaXterm.

On MacOS and Linux machines you can use the standard ‘Terminal’.

Getting data inside your workspace

Mounting online storage

If you have a Research Drive account, you can mount it in your workspace. This method is most easy, and works well for working with small datasets (e.g. <1 GB).

Transferring data

In many cases it is more reliable to get a copy of your data on the Storage unit that is attached to your workspace.

See the data transfer manuals for the most common ways of transferring data to your workspace.

Additionally, on some workspaces, the following methods may also be available:

  • Upload from your laptop (Jupyter Notebook and Rstudio Workspaces).
  • Download using the internet browser (on Ubuntu Desktop and Windows workspaces, for data stored on e.g. SURFdrive, OnedDive, etc.).