Accessing the System
Getting an Account on the Cluster
There are multiple ways to get an account/allocation on the Campus Cluster, including:
The Illinois Computes program (free to Illinois researchers).
Investing in (buying) compute and/or storage resources.
Affiliation with an existing Campus Cluster investor.
Visit Ways to Access the Illinois Campus Cluster for more details. Go to NCSA Allocations for information about allocations on all of NCSA’s resources.
Logging in to the Cluster
After you have an account/allocation on the Campus Cluster, connect to the head nodes via Secure Shell (SSH) with your University of Illinois NetID and NetID password.
Generally, Unix/Linux based systems have an SSH client by default, however desktops/laptops running versions of Windows prior to Windows 10 version 1803 do not. There is third party software available for Windows users to access the Campus Cluster. Please see this non-exhaustive list of SSH Clients clients that can be used to access the Campus Cluster.
The following is the hostname that provides round-robin access to head nodes of the Campus Cluster instances as indicated:
Access Method |
Hostname |
Head Node |
|---|---|---|
SSH |
cc-login.campuscluster.illinois.edu
|
cc-login1, …, cc-login5 |
SSH Clients
A variety of SSH-based clients are available for accessing the Campus Cluster from your local system. There are two types of SSH clients, clients that support both remote login access and data transfers, and clients that support data transfers only.
SSH Client |
Remote Login |
Data Transfer |
Installs On |
|---|---|---|---|
MobaXterm is an enhanced terminal with an X server and a set of Unix commands (GNU/Cygwin) packaged in the application. |
Yes |
Yes |
Windows |
SSH Secure Shell allows you to securely log in to remote host computers, to execute commands safely on a remote computer, and to provide secure encrypted and authenticated communications between two hosts in an untrusted network. |
Yes |
Yes |
Windows |
Tunnelier is a flexible SSH client which includes terminal emulation, graphical as well as command-line sftp support, and ftp-to-sftp bridge, additional tunneling features including dynamic port forwarding through integrated proxy. |
Yes |
Yes |
Windows |
PuTTY is an open source terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols and as a serial console client. |
Yes |
Yes |
Windows Linux Mac OS |
FileZilla is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS, and sftp client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. |
No |
Yes |
Windows Linux Mac OS |
WinSCP is an open source free sftp client, FTPS client, and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is file transfer between a local computer and a remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers scripting and basic file manager functionality. |
No |
Yes |
Windows |
See the Storage and Data Guide for information on transferring files/data to and from the Campus Cluster.
Network Details for Illinois Investors
The Campus Cluster is interconnected with the University of Illinois networks via the Campus Advanced Research Network Environment (CARNE) and is addressed out of fully accessible public IP space, located outside of the Illinois campus firewall. This positioning outside of the campus firewall enables access to regional and national research networks at high speeds and without restrictions. However, there may be some special use cases where Campus Cluster nodes need to initiate communication with hosts on the Illinois campus network (for example, you are hosting a special license server behind the firewall). For these, you will need to coordinate with your department IT pro to ensure that your hosts are in the appropriate Illinois campus firewall group.
Outbound communication from Illinois to the Campus Cluster should work without issue, as well as any communications from the Campus Cluster outbound to regional and national research networks.