Logging onto a remote server
Logging on to a remote server
Objectives:
- Learn what remote servers are
- Log in to your remote server
Important Caveat: For this lesson your instructors have set up remote servers for you. More information is available on how to do this at Amazon AWS or other locations.
Choosing a cloud platform
The most important thing about The Cloud is choice - instead of purchasing a physical computer, you can obtain on-demand computing at almost any scale. This power comes with advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages of Cloud Computing * Access large amounts of computing power on demand * Full administrative rights - install anything * Use pre-configured images (software already installed)
Disadvantages of Cloud Computing * Cloud computing costs money (you must keep track of your costs) * If you need help, you may not have a local system administrator * Images may be poorly documented (you may not be clear on what is installed, or how to use it)
Cloud platform choices
There are several cloud providers to choose from. Some scientific clouds may either be free or allocate resources competitively. Commercial clouds are can be very powerful, but choice can be overwhelming. We will cover as much as we you need to get through the Data Carpentry lessons, but you will ultimately need to learn things not covered here so see the documentation below:
Commercial Clouds
Open Science Clouds
* Coming in 2016
For this workshop we’re using Amazon instances. Likely you have servers here, but how you access them (via ssh) should be the same for the servers here, and your friendly sys admins will be able to help you get set up.
Connect to Amazon Instance
Instructions for MAC
- Put your name next to a DNS address on the etherpad. This will be your computer for the lesson.
-
Open the terminal application on your Mac and use ‘ssh’ to connect. Your command will be:
bash $ ssh dcuser@your.amazon.dns - Your computer will be unable to verify the authenticity of the host… type yes to continue connecting
- Then enter the password for this computer: ‘data4Carp’
You should now be connected to your personal instance. You can confirm this with the following commands; whoami,pwd,ls, which should yield the following results:
bash
Last login: Thu Jul 30 13:21:08 2015 from 8.sub-70-197-200.myvzw.com
$ whoami
dcuser
$ pwd
/home/dcuser
$ ls
dc_sample_data FastQC Trimmomatic-0.32
$
Instructions for PC
- Put your name next to a DNS address on the etherpad. This will be your computer for the lesson.
- Download the PuTTY application at: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe
- Start PuTTY. In the section ‘Specify the destination you want to connect to’ for ‘Host Name (or IP address)’ paste in the DNS address and click ‘Open’
- When prompted to login as, enter ‘dcuser’; you may be notified that the authenticity of the host cannot be verified - if so, ignore the warning an continue connecting
- When prompted for a password enter ‘data4Carp’
You should now be connected to your personal instance. You can confirm this with the following commands; whoami,pwd,ls, which should yield the following results:
bash
Last login: Thu Jul 30 13:21:08 2015 from 8.sub-70-197-200.myvzw.com
$ whoami
dcuser
$ pwd
/home/dcuser
$ ls
dc_sample_data FastQC Trimmomatic-0.32
$