Connecting to RCS HPC Systems

RCS maintains and operates various systems and clusters which can be connected to from within the University of Calgary campus network or via the University of Calgary IT General VPN.

Cluster	Hostname	Access	Accessible by
ARC	arc.ucalgary.ca	SSH	All ARC users
Arc Jupyter Notebooks	jupyter.ucalgary.ca	HTTPS	All ARC users
ARC DTN	arc-dtn.ucalgary.ca	SSH	All ARC users
TALC	talc.ucalgary.ca	SSH, HTTP (Jupyter)	All TALC users
MARC	marc.ucalgary.ca	Citrix	MARC users

Connecting to the University VPN

All connections made to our infrastructure must be made from the University of Calgary campus network or via the University of Calgary IT General VPN.

For additional help, refer to:

• The General VPN knowledge base article for help on setting up your General VPN connection on your computer.
• The VPN software knowledge base article for information on where to obtain FortiClient.

Here is how to connect to the UofC network:

From Windows: https://ucalgary.service-now.com/it?id=kb_article&sys_id=f0ec8ad513d1a2406f3afbb2e144b072

From MacOS: https://ucalgary.service-now.com/it?id=kb_article&sys_id=a83016d01343a2c009fbbc62e144b0ff

From Linux: https://ucalgary.service-now.com/it?id=kb_article&sys_id=9fa2830d1311ea008246d7b2e144b061

After connecting to the General VPN, you will then be able to connect via SSH or Citrix to our compute infrastructure.

Getting the FortiClient VPN

The FortiClient VPN software can be downloaded from the UofC software distribution web site:

https://iac01.ucalgary.ca/SDSWeb/

Alternatively, the FortiClient VPN software can also be downloaded for free from the FortiClient web site:

https://www.forticlient.com/downloads

Once you have downloaded the client you will need to configure it.

Before you do that, you should test if you have VPN access. The best way to do this is to login to the VPN using your web browser:

https://gpvpn2.ucalgary.ca:10443/

If you can login there, you can then install the VPN client and configure it with following information:

• Host: gpvpn2.ucalgary.ca
• Port: 10443
• User: your_uofc_user.name

If you cannot login, then you will have to raise a ticket with the help desk at

https://ucalgary.service-now.com/it

Connecting with SSH

Secure Shell (SSH) is an encrypted network protocol that allows secure communication between your computer and a server.

On Linux or MacOS computers, SSH is most likely installed and can be used by opening a terminal and running:

ssh username@arc.ucalgary.ca

For work requiring X11 forwarding, pass in the -X flag.

ssh -X username@arc.ucalgary.ca

On Windows, there are various clients that can be used to connect to our cluster including:

• PuTTY
• MobaXterm

Connecting to the Fortinet Web Portal

• The fortinet web portal allows VPN like access but without needing any client other than a browser. To connect via the Fortinet Web Portal point your browser at:

https://gpvpn2.ucalgary.ca:10443/

• Enter your UC username and password when prompted.
• Click "Quick Connection"

Connecting to a web site

• Click HTTP/HTTPS
• Enter the URL that you want to go to i.e. jupyter.ucalgary.ca or talc.ucalgary.ca
• The website will open in a new browser tab and you may proceed normally.

Connecting via SSH

• No ssh client is required as the browser becomes the ssh client
• click SSH
• Fill out the "Host" box with username@hostname i.e. uofcusername@arc.ucalgary.ca
• A new browser tab will open with a prompt for your UC username/password
• The ssh terminal will open in a new tab and you can proceed typing commands into the terminal normally.

External Collaborators

The main requirement for a researcher to have an account on ARC, or any other compute cluster at UofC is that the researcher must have a UofC IT account and have a corresponding UofC e-mail address. This is because access to the clusters is controlled by the central authentication system as to the rest of the electronic services on campus. Thus, external collaborators cannot get an account on ARC unless they have a UofC IT account.

To address this issue and to facilitate a collaborative environment there is a hiring template for External Research Collaborators who need to remotely access the secure compute and High Performance Compute (HPC) resources at the University of Calgary.

This new designation allows you to request General Associate (GA) access for external research collaborators, that are not University of Calgary employees or associated with AHS, to our HPC and Secure Compute services in an expedited manner. Researchers in this category require a Principal Investigator (PI) or a PI delegate to submit a Template Based Hire (TBH) with the new GA template. Please note that AHS external researchers have their own GA template available for them and they don’t need to use this new GA template.

Principal Investigators or their delegates can request the creation of a new General Associate External Collaborator following the Template Base Hire form process in PeopleSoft and selecting the template “UC_CWR_EXT_RES_CL – Gen Associate – External Research Collaborator”. These requests will need to be approved by Research Computing Services, who is managing HPC. Once the transaction is approved, it will go to HR to complete the hiring process and the new account will be ready for your associate.

Actions Required

• For new External Research Collaborators, please follow the Template Base Hire described above.
• If you currently have External Collaborators under a different template but fits into the new category, please let us know their names and email addresses and we will transfer them to the proper template.