Pulse VPN for NREL Users

This guide describes how to connect to NREL HPC Center systems from your desktop or laptop.  The basic steps are:

• Connect to the NREL network
• Connect to the desired system

Connecting to the NREL Network via the Pulse VPN

If you are not already connected to the NREL network, you must establish a VPN session to NREL. If you are connecting from an NREL laptop you may use the Junos Pulse client software. Non-NREL systems should use the HPC VPN!

If you are a remote user, or are connecting with a non-NREL owned computer, you can get access to the HPC systems. If this is you, follow the instructions at the Remote User page to get Pulse configured. 

Follow these steps once the Pulse client has connected:

Logging in to Peregrine

Use SSH to login to the system. Your login and password will match your NREL network account login/password.

From OS X or Linux, open a terminal window and type:

ssh USERNAME@peregrine.hpc.nrel.gov

X11 on Peregrine

To use X11 applications on Peregrine, such as Totalview, you must have X11 installed on your workstation or laptop. On Mac OS X systems, from within an X11 window, type the command

ssh -Y USERNAME@peregrine.hpc.nrel.gov

For file transfer use:

scp local_file USERNAME@peregrine.hpc.nrel.gov:

Want to streamline your command-line and not have to type so much? Read our ssh config file tips!

Windows File Transfer GUI

Connecting from a Windows desktop, use a windows SSH client like xming or putty for login and file transfer. Another option for transferring files from a windows desktop is the open source utility, FileZilla.

WinSCP is an open source SFTP, SCP and FTP client for Microsoft Windows. It is used to securely transfer files from a local computer to a remote computer.

OS X File Transfer GUI

Since iTerm2 and the built-in Terminal app work so well, you may just want to stick with the command line on a Mac. However, if you must use a graphical app, one of the following may be worth consideration:

• FileZilla
• Fugu
• CyberDuck

These and others are listed at this thread about OS X graphical file transfer apps.

Connecting to WinHPC

Your login for the Windows HPC Cluster will match your NREL Active Directory login/password that you use to login to your workstation. Please log out and back into your workstation for your account to be finalized. Open a Remote Desktop connection using server name WINHPC02 (this is the login node). Mac users need to login using nrel_nt\userid and winhpc02.nrel.gov as the domain. We have detailed documentation on how to connect to the WinHPC from a Mac.

ssh tips:

Setting up ssh keys can be very convenient and save a lot of time and keystrokes.

Basically, you create ssh keys (public and private) on the source system. Then, copy the content of the public key info from the source into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file of your target system. If it's set up correctly, it greatly simplifies using ssh and scp to that target system.

Commands to set up ssh keys

Most of the commands below you can simply cut and paste. Just substitute TARGETSERVER with your actual target server.

Setup your SSH keys

First, check to see if you already have ssh keys setup on your laptop. If you do, skip this step.

ls -la ~/.ssh

If you see a list of file that includes id_rsa and id_rsa.pub, skip the next step. These are already configured on the NREL HPC systems. HPC system users can skip this step. If you get an error or don't see those files, do the following.

mkdir ~/.ssh
cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -q -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa
# optionally with no password: ssh-keygen -q -t rsa -N '' -f ~//.ssh/id_rsa
chmod 600 *
chmod 700 ~/.ssh

With id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in your ~/.ssh directory, you can now scp the .pub file and set up the target server.

Copy the id_rsa.pub to the target server

# still on your laptop or source
scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub TARGETSERVER:source-id_rsa.pub

# Now, ssh to the TARGETSERVER and set it up
# ------------------------------------------------
ssh TARGETSERVER 
mkdir ~/.ssh
touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
cat ~/source-id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
rm ~/source-id_rsa.pub

# Fix permissions
# ------------------------------
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/*

Try it

From your laptop or source workstation, substitute TARGETSERVER with you actual target server name, and type:

$ ssh TARGETSERVER

The TARGETSERVER may ask you for a password the first time. If it does, log in again.

It should just work.