Introduction

This guide will walk you through the basic steps to get started with the SciNet Open OnDemand portal. Open OnDemand is a web-based platform that provides access to a wide range of scientific applications and computing resources. It allows you to interact with Niagara through a web browser instead of via a terminal, without the need to install any software on your local machine. You will be able to perform file management, submit/monitor jobs and run applications interactively.

Logging into the Open OnDemand portal

To access the Open OnDemand portal, open a web browser and navigate to the following page: [1]. You will be prompted to enter your Alliance username and password, followed by a second factor authentication via Duo or Yubikey. Once you have logged in, you will be taken to the Open OnDemand dashboard. From here you can access the various tools and applications available on the platform.

File management

The Open OnDemand platform provides a file browser that allows you to manage your files and directories on the filesystem. To access the file browser, click on the "Files" tab and select which directory you want to manage from the dropdown (`HOME`, `SCRATCH` or `PROJECT`). You will be taken to the file browser interface, where you can:

Navigate through your directories
Upload/download files
Create new files/directories
Delete files/directories
Edit existing files

Job submission

Open OnDemand also provides a job submission interface that allows you to submit batch jobs to Niagara. Navigate to the "Jobs" tab and select "Job Composer", this will take you to the job submission form. From here click on the "New Job" button and you can create a job script from scratch, use an existing job script that you have on the file sytem or using a job template. You can specify job parameters such as the job script name and account to submit from using the "Job Options" button. The remaining parameters like the number of nodes, number of cores, walltime, etc. can be modified by editing the job script directly with the "Open Editor" button. Once you have filled in the required fields, click on the "Submit" button to submit the job.

The page shows the status of your job so you can see whether it is queued, running or completed. You can also view the output and error logs of the job once it is finished by clicking on the relevant files under the "Folder Contents" section of the "Job Details" panel to the right.

Job monitoring

To get an overview of all your jobs in the queue you can use the job monitoring interface. Navigate to the "Jobs" tab and select "Active Jobs". You can filter the jobs by using the "Filter" text box at the top right. Columns can also be sorted by clicking on the column headers, for example you can sort by job status (running, completed, failed, etc.). Clicking on ">" to the left of a job will show you more details about the job, such as the start/end time, node list and account charged etc. You might also want to show all jobs in the queue you can do this by clicking on the dropdown menu at the top right and selecting "All Jobs". A more detailed view of your jobs can still be found in the myscinet portal at [2].

Interactive applications

Open OnDemand also features interactive applications that you can run directly from your web browser. To access the applications, navigate to the "Interactive Apps" tab and select the application you want to run from the dropdown. This will then bring you to the job submission page where you can choose job parameters such as:

Allocation to charge to
Length of job in hours
Number of cores
Amount of memory to allocate (GB)
Notify you by email when the job starts

When you have chosen your job parameters click on the "Launch" button to submit your job to the queue. You will be taken to the "My Interactive Sessions" page where you can see the status of your job, i.e. queued, running or completed. Once the job has been assigned a node and is running, you can click on the "Connect to APP_NAME" button to launch the application. The application will open in a new tab in your browser, and you can interact with it as you would running it locally.

If you would like terminal access to the node where the application is running, to monitor the performance for example you can click on the button beside "Host" starting wit ">_". This will open a terminal window in your browser where you can run commands on the node directly.

If for whatever reason you would like to kill the job, you can do so by clicking on the red "Delete" button in the job panel in the "My Interactive Sessions" page.

Terminal access

Sometimes you might prefer to use a terminal to interact with Niagara, Open OnDemand provides a web-based terminal that you can use to access the command line interface. To access the terminal, navigate to the "Clusters" tab and select "Niagara Shell Access". This will open a new tab in your browser with a terminal window where you can run commands as you would in a regular terminal session.

Open OnDemand Quickstart

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