Connecting to Your VDI
From the portal you can launch a new Virtual Desktop session or reconnect to an existing one.
Launch a new Virtual Desktop Session:
Click on “Launch New Virtual Desktop”
Select your settings
- Session Name: Input unique name (3-24 characters)
- Project: select from drop down menu the name of your lab or the project you are specifically working on.
- Operating System: Select either Amazon Linux or Windows (Note: all other options do not have a software stack attached)
- Software Stack: Select the option associated with the operating systems selected. Please review the accompanying document “Current RES software stacks” for description of currently supported software stacks.
- Virtual Desktop Size: instance type, can select any size. We recommend that – particularly when selecting large instances – you stop your session when not in use.
- Storage Size (GB): minimum supported for the stack selected will be automatically set. Increase if needed.
Click Submit
The Virtual Desktop should go through the following states:
“Provisioning” > “Creating” > “Initializing” > “Ready”
Note: Can take up to about 5 - 10 mins for a virtual desktop to become Ready; and may take up to 30 mins for Windows VDIs.
Virtual Desktop Sizes: EC2 Instance Types
AWS uses the concept of instance families to group compute resources into groups with similar characteristics. Using letter and number codes, these can be hard to decypher at first, but make sense once you've learned the code. Please see Amazon EC2 instance type naming conventions.
We've slimmed down the vast array of families that are available into a few that will serve most research use cases:
| Family | Suggested Use | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| i3en | Storage Optimized | Workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to very large data sets on local storage. |
| c6in, c8g | Compute Optimized | Compute intensive applications that benefit from high performance processors |
| g4ad, g4dn, g5 | Accelerated Computing | Use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform functions (e.g. GPUs) |
| m6a, m6g | General Purpose | Provide a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources |
| r6in, x2iedn | Memory Optimized | Deliver fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory |
| t3 | Gneral Purpose, burstable | baseline CPU performance with the ability to burst beyond their baseline at any time |
Suffixes: - 'e': extra memory - 'n': network enhanced - ‘i’ Intel processors; - ‘d’ instance store volumes that are wiped on hibernate and shutdown; - 'g' AWS Graviton processors - 'a' AMD processors
The instance size (large, xlarge, 2xlarge, etc) is still in your hands, and the size decision should be based on approximations of the # of CPUs and RAM size required for your work. Please see our FAQ on this topic if you do not know.
One might also consider selecting 'network optimized' instances, those with the suffix n, for example r6in, if one is reading/writing large amounts of data from data files located on network storage. However, one will see the best performance by moving files to the local instance storage, C:\ or D:\ drives on Windows VDIs, and then deleting the data copies when done and saving the results back on the network shared storage before stopping or terminating your VDI.
Connect to your Virtual Desktop Session:
When the state of your session will show as “Ready” you will be able to click on “Connect”
You will be asked to authenticate on the typical Windows or Linux login screen. As credentials you should using your URC username and password. The username should be auto-populated on the login screen, but if not, please make sure to input the username you see on the top right corner of the RES portal. Your password is your Okta password.
Stopping/Resuming/Terminating your Virtual Desktop Sessions:
You can control the lifecycle of your Virtual Desktop Sessions using the options in the “Actions” drop down menu on the stanza pertaining to the Session in question, in the “My Virtual Desktops” section of the Research and Engineering Studio Portal.
- “Reboot” restarts the systems that hosts your session. This should only take a few minutes.
- “Stop” is the equivalent to shutdown the system. The “powered off” system will stay off until you go back to that menu and select “Start”. Stopping the system is recommended as good cost saving solution when you are not using the system.
- “Start” will power on and start a previously stopped session. This could take a few minutes to start up (5 minutes), but much less than provisioning a new session.
- “Terminate” will shutdown and delete your system. This should be selected if you no longer need that system, or if you have been recommended by URC support to relaunch your session using an updated version of the software stack.
Please note that all data stored locally on the C: drive (or root disk ) of the system will be terminated and not recoverable. Please make sure to save any relevant data to your lab or project folder before terminating your sessions.