ERISXdl Getting Started

Posted on February 23, 2021
Updated on

June 2, 2023

ERISXdl Pricing Policy

Please bear in mind that in order to recoup the initial capital cost for the ERISXdl platform a fee for GPU usage will be charged at a rate of $0.008 /min GPU.

However, for the purposes of initial testing and debugging a free tier called the Basic partition will be made available to registered users.

Connecting to ERISXdl

The ERISXdl Platform is accessed via the Linux command-line interface tool ssh so that some familiarity with Linux terminal commands is required. More precisely, users can ssh from within the Mass General Brigham network or via VPN if offsite. Please be aware, however, that in order to use both Harbor and the Slurm job scheduler on ERISXdl the user's group must first submit an application as described under the section "Application Procedure for the ERISXdl platform" here.

Connect from a PC running Microsoft Windows:

  • (Recommended) Use the MobaXterm application to connect. 
    For more information on the features of MobaXterm, reference their documentation.

    • Download the Free Home Edition of MobaXterm here and extract the files from the download to your preferred location. Run the installer and then application if you downloaded the Installer edition, or run the .exe file if you downloaded the Portable edition.
    • Once the application is open, select "Session" from the top toolbar. This will open a new pop-up window.
    • Select "SSH" as the session type, and fill in the specified fields as followed. Once done, click "OK"

      • Remote host: erisxdl.partners.org
      • Specify username (make sure it's checked off): your Mass General Brigham user ID
      • Port: 22
    • A new terminal tab should open in the MobaXterm window, prompting for your password. Enter your Mass General Brigham password to continue.
    • Once logged in, you will also be able to view your home directory files and folders in the "Sftp" tab on the left toolbar in MobaXterm
  • Use the PuTTY ssh client to connect

    • Download the PuTTY ssh client (putty.exe)
    • Double click the downloaded file
    • Enter the following connection information and press "Open"

      • Host Name (or IP address): erisxdl.partners.org
      • Port: 22
      • Protocol: SSH
    • Enter your Mass General Brigham user ID and password when prompted

Connect from Mac or Linux

  • Open the "Terminal" application
  • Using your Mass General Brigham user ID, type this line followed by your password: ssh <username>@erisxdl.partners.org

Select and Prepare the Application Container 

The Nvidia catalog of images at https://catalog.ngc.nvidia.com/ provides access to a wide range of containerized deep learning applications which are optimal for running on ERISXdl. Please pull the latest image for a particular application directly from nvcr.io/nvidia e.g. nvcr.io/nvidia/tensorflow:22.08-tf2-py3.
 
You may additionally pull containers from an outside registry and subsequently push them into your Harbor registry for use in Slurm jobs. In this case it is recommended to first use the free Basic partition to test that the image's runtime CUDA libraries are fully utilizing the GPUs.
 
To see the list of available images on both the local node and at other registries such as erixdl.partners.org you can use the following terminal command:
 

$ podman images

 
For more information about using containers on ERISXdl, read the Using Docker Containers article.
 
To learn how to submit jobs on ERISXdl using prepared images in Harbor, please refer to Using SLURM article.

 

If you have any questions, please contact us at hpcsupport@partners.org.

 

 

Go to KB0038524 in the IS Service Desk