HPC Getting Started

Account Request

To register for an account on Raad2/Hazeem, please visit our User Account Page.

Account Activation

When a HPC Cluster account is created, the user will be informed via email. In this notification, the user shall also be provided with an assigned username to be used specifically to log in to the HPC Cluster. Upon first login, the system will require you to change your password. Follow the prompts. You will now be logged in. In the event the system does not force a password change, change it yourself using the passwd command for that purpose.

Accessing RAAD2

To Start computation on RAAD2 HPC Cluster, first you need to login with the credentials provided and then if required transfer source code/data to RAAD. Below guide explains logging in process for Linux, Mac and Windows OS.

Linux & MAC

Logins

In any Linux environment, you can use SSH to login to RAAD2.

Open Terminal and type "ssh user_name@raad2.hbku.edu.qa" without quotes and hit enter.
Provide your password and hit enter.
The prompt at terminal will change to [user_name@raad2 ~]$ indicating you are successfully logged in.

Data Transfers

To transfer data from Linux Host to your home directory in RAAD2, you can use Secure Copy. For example;

scp local_data user_name@raad2.hbku.edu.qa:$path

Detailed information on Secure Copy can be found at SCP

Windows

Logins

Number of applications such as Putty, X-Win32 or MobaXterm enable users to remotely connect to our Raad2 HPC over the network.

MobaXterm

Our recommended way of connecting to HPC Cluster is using MobaXterm software which is free for personal use. It allows user to connect to HPC Cluster via SSH and can launch GUI applications remotely. Detailed installation and configuration information can be found here Note that, provided network latency is not an issue, MobaXterm is the preferred and recommended method for remote access to Raad2 as it allows for running of GUI based applications remotely on the HPC Cluster.

X-Win32

This is a paid software. Users can buy their own license or may use the trial version. Instructions for installing and configuring X-Win32 are available at X-Win32 Installation

Alternatively, users can use the text-terminal based PuTTY application (freely available) for their access to Raad2. Any other SSH client would do just fine as well.

Putty

It is an open-source software with which you can connect to HPC Cluster remotely via SSH. It is a text based utility and you will not be able to launch GUI sessions remotely. Users who are not in HBKU and experience latency over network, can use this utility to effectively launch session to HPC Cluster. Installation and configuration steps are detailed here

Data Transfers

Network R: Drive

To be elaborated.

SCP Clients

To transfer your data from Windows storage to HPC Cluster, you can use FTP clients for Windows. We have documented two open-source client below;

Submitting your First Job

Once you are connected to RAAD2HPC Cluster you can start submitting jobs. But before this it is important to identify nature of your compute job with respect to parameters below;

Expected Compute Time
Amount of Memory Required
Number of CPU's required
Compiler or Library which can be required by your program

Once you have identified each parameter, you can write your job. RAAD2 uses Portable Batch System to schedule user jobs. Further information about this is explained in Batch processing