SCC OnDemand

SCC OnDemand is the recommended way to use the SCC. It is a web portal that gives you the whole cluster through a browser — files, terminals, graphical applications and job monitoring. There is nothing to install, and it works from any machine, on or off campus.

https://scc-ondemand.bu.edu

Log in with your BU username and Kerberos password.

The SCC OnDemand landing page in a browser. A red menu bar runs across the top with the items SCC OnDemand, Files, Quotas, Login Nodes, Interactive Apps, an active-sessions icon, and on the right a help icon, an account icon and a log-out icon. Below it is a photograph of the cluster, the caption "Access the SCC using only your web browser!", and a link to the SCC OnDemand documentation.

Everything you need is in that red menu bar. The rest of this page walks through it one item at a time.

Files

The SCC OnDemand menu bar with the Files menu highlighted.

The file manager — SCC OnDemand's version of the Finder on macOS or File Explorer on Windows. Use it to look at, download, upload, rename, move, copy and delete files on the SCC.

It opens in a new browser tab.

Quotas

The SCC OnDemand menu bar with the Quotas menu highlighted.

A detailed storage report for your home directory and for every project you belong to. This is where you find out how much space you have left before you run out of it, which matters more than new users expect — see The Linux File System.

It opens in a new browser tab.

Login Nodes

The SCC OnDemand menu bar with the Login Nodes menu highlighted.

Opens a Linux terminal on one of the four login nodes — scc1, scc2, scc4 or geo — right in your browser.

Login nodes are not for heavy computation. They are shared by everyone on the cluster and are meant for administrative work: moving and renaming files, editing text, submitting jobs. Real analysis belongs on a compute node, which you get from Interactive Apps or from the batch system.

It opens in a new browser tab.

Interactive Apps

The SCC OnDemand menu bar with the Interactive Apps menu highlighted.

This is where you request an interactive session on a compute node — a machine actually designed for heavy computation. The menu lists popular software packages, and for each one you choose the resources you want.

The most basic app is Desktop, which opens a full Linux desktop environment on a compute node. That is the subject of the next page.

Active Sessions

The SCC OnDemand menu bar with the active-sessions icon, just to the right of Interactive Apps, highlighted.

Lists every interactive session you currently have running. This is how you get back to a session after closing its window — the session keeps running until its time limit expires, so closing the tab does not end it.

Help

The SCC OnDemand menu bar with the help icon on the right-hand side highlighted.

Links to the resources worth bookmarking: the IS&T help email address, the RCS online documentation, the SCC status page, and SCC account management.

Further Reading