JupyterHub

The JupyterHPC service offers a simple, interactive access to the HPC Cluster’s resources.

JupyterHPC is available to all HPC users who have an HPC Portal account. If you do not have an HPC Portal account, please consult Getting an Account. The account selector is shown in the top-left corner of the JuypterHPC interface. If you are part of multiple projects, you can choose the project and username you want to use there.

Info

If you contact GWDG support about JupyterHPC, please use one of the HPC specific support addresses or make it clear that you are talking about a HPC service, so that your request can be quickly and efficiently handled without a detour to the GWDG Jupyter Cloud team.

Please note that the settings you use to start your JupyterHPC session will be saved in your browser. A log of the container execution will be created in your HPC home directory in the current.jupyterhub.notebook.log file. Please refer to this file if you encounter problems with JupyterHPC and attach it to your email if you contact customer support. Also check that you are below the quota for your home directory. For calculations that need compute resources over a long duration, please submit a batch job to the appropriate slurm partition instead of using JupyterHPC.

Spawner Interface

Spawner Interface Spawner Interface

HPC Type

HPC Type Selector HPC Type Selector

JupyterHPC offers two categories of apps: Jupyter and Desktop. You can select the app category in the first row of the spawner interface.
Jupyter-type apps allow you to use the resources of the cluster as a web service, e.g. by directly running Juypter notebooks.
Desktop-type apps use VNC to stream a full desktop environment over the web to your browser, and allow you to use the HPC resources as if it was your personal computer.

HPC Application

HPC Application Selector HPC Application Selector

The HPC Application tray is visible if you have the HPC Type Juypter selected. Currently, JuypterHPC offers three applications:

  • JupyterLab: The well-known Juypter notebook interface. Allows you to run Juypter notebooks based on multiple kernels and programming languages. Currently, we support Python, R, Julia, bash and SageMath based notebooks.

  • RStudio: A web version of the popular RStudio IDE developed by Posit PBC. The application comes with a lot of R packages preinstalled.

  • Code IDE: The popular CodeServer IDE, now available directly on the cluster. Supports a large variety of programming languages and extensions for customization.

Desktop Environment

Desktop Environment Selector Desktop Environment Selector

The Desktop Environment tray is visible if you have the HPC Type Desktop selected. Currently, JuypterHPC offers three desktop environments: Xfce, GNOME and KDE. All three start a desktop environment session on the HPC Cluster, which is forwarded to your browser via VNC. The sessions closely emulate a normal Linux Desktop computer and are intended for applications that require a graphical user interface to use (such as Matlab). If you select GPU in the HPC Device tray, the desktop environment will use GPU hardware acceleration on all applications that support it.

HPC Device

HPC Device Selector HPC Device Selector

With the HPC Device selector tray, you can select which node type your JupyterHPC session will use.

  • CPU: You will get a CPU-compute focused node, with a large amount of RAM and a large local NVMe disk available. This should be the default choice in most cases. For HPC Desktops, the CPU-compute focused node will use software rendering, which is fast enough for normal desktop usage in most cases.
  • GPU: You will get a GPU-compute focused node, with a NVidia Quaddro RTX 5000 GPU avialable. Please only select this if your job requires a GPU. The lower number of available GPUs could otherwise cause a large number of sessions to wait.

Advanced settings

Advanced Settings Advanced Settings

Under advanced settings, you can make more precise configurations to your JupyterHPC session. We recommend using the default settings.

  • Job Duration: The time limit of your session. After the time limit is up, your session will be terminated and you will have to start a new one. Please remember that shorter time limits have a higher priority for the scheduler and may start sooner.
  • Number of CPU Cores / Memory: Select the amount of CPU Cores and main memory (RAM) for your session.
  • Reservation: If you have a Slurm reservation on the cluster that is authorized for JupyterHPC, you can enter it here.
  • Home directory: The directory your JuypterHPC session starts in.
  • Custom Container location: With this setting, you can use your own container within the JuypterHPC infrastructure, provided it has installed the required packages. Please refer to Create your own container for more information.