ARE runs on the Gadi supercomputer and jobs are charged at standard NCI rates. Interactive jobs spend a large fraction of their time in idle state. Please request the VDI session to run on the cheaper normalbw queue, ask for the small size and use the code of the NCI project which supports you with its compute grant (SU).
It might be convenient to use the Google Chrome browser to open ARE as it enables "copy/paste" operations across the host computer and the VDI session. If the shortcut key doesn't work, choose it from the right-click dropdown list.
You can also log into the Gadi compute node hosting the VDI session via SSH from your desktop for easier copy/paste.
Request a VDI Desktop
On the ARE dashboard page, select Virtual Desktop and request resources following the example request form below.
In the "Project" field, fill in the NCI project code you want to run your VDI session. The cost of the VDI session will be charged from the named project.
In the "Storage" field, declare all the project directories that you need access to on /scratch and /g/data. For example, add gdata/hh5 if you want to use modules maintained by the hh5 project.
The minimum PBS storage directive required is "gdata/hr22+gdata/access+gdata/ki32"+scratch/<PROJECT>, where <PROJECT> should be identical to the project code used in the Project field of the ARE VDI request form. In the example we used the project om02. Replace it with your own project code in both fields.
In the "Jobfs size" field, request the amount of local disk required by the Cylc suite. If missing, the default value is 100 MiB, which, in the majority of cases, is not enough to support local tasks that actively writing data to `$TMPDIR`.
Launch the VDI Desktop
Once the VDI session is ready, launch it by clicking the Launch VDI Desktop button at the bottom.
Start a MATE Terminal
In the VDI session, click the MATE Terminal icon to launch a terminal.
