The NITRC Computational Environment (NITRC-CE) takes advantage of cloud computing offered through Amazon Web Services.

If you do not already have an AWS account, go to the AWS home page at aws.amazon.com.

Click the "Sign Up" button, and follow the instructions to create your AWS account.

Once you are logged in with your account, you may use a public Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to get started with NITRC-CE.

Go to "My Account/Console" and select "AWS Management Console."

Select "EC2" under "Compute & Networking."

Now, you see your EC2 Dashboard.

To launch a new NITRC-CE instance, click the "Launch Instance" button.

You will now follow a series of steps to walk you through the creation of a new instance.

First, we need to find the public AMI. Select the "Community AMIs" tab.

Enter "nitrc-ce" in the search field to narrow down the list.

When the search is complete, you will see something similar to this list.

The actual available AMIs may change as new images are released.

For this demonstration, we are going to select the latest standard instance.

Next, we are going to select an instance type.

In general, we recommend a smaller instance for simple, short-turn-around analysis, and a larger instance for more demanding jobs.

Select your instance and click the "Next" button.

We are just going to go with the defaults for the next few steps.

For Configure Instance, click the "Next" button.

For Add Storage, click the "Next" button.

For Tag Instance, click the "Next" button.

Finally, we need to configure the firewall. This is related to network access to your virtual computer.

If you are experienced with AWS, you may use an existing security group.

If you are new to AWS, you will need a new security group that permits tcp, ssh, and VNC access.

Give the group a name and a description.
 
For each rule, we need to provide the type, protocol, port range, and source.

For example, for Secure Shell access, select "SSH" for the type.

The Protocol would remain as "TCP."

The "Port Range" would be "22" and the "Source" would be "Anywhere."

Click the "Add Rule" button to add another rule.

You would repeat this for each rule that is needed.

To save time, I will select an existing security group with all the necessary rules.

Here, port 22 is for Secure Shell access.

80 is for HTTP Web access.

443 is for secure HTTPS Web access.

5800-5810 is a Custom TCP Rule for VNC Web server access.

5900-5910 is a Custom TCP Rule for VNC access.

6444-6445 is a Custom TCP Rule for Sun Grid Engine access.

And, 8001 is a Custom TCP Rule for LONI Distributed Pipeline Server (DPS) access.

Click the "Review and Launch" button.

We now see a review page for the instance we just created, and all should be well. 

Click the "Launch" button to start the instance.

Now you may set the Key Pair, which deals with how you access your virtual computer.

If you are experienced with AWS, you may use your existing Key Pair.

If you are new to AWS, proceeding without a Key Pair is fine, because NITRC AMIs are pre-secured.

Click the "Launch Instances" button.

Click the instance link that has been initiated to close the "Launch Instance Wizard" and return to your EC2 Console Dashboard.

You should be on your Instances page.

The instance we just created has no name.

You may click on the pencil icon to enter and save something meaningful.

The instance should be running, but this may take a little while.

It may also take a few minutes for the instance to pass the status checks.

Once the status checks have passed, look for the "Public DNS" line and copy that address.

This Public DNS is going to change every time the instance is restarted.

Open a new tab or window and enter this address.

Now you are ready to start a VNC session and use NITRC-CE!  Please watch our companion videos for demonstrations of these.

And remember, you only pay while an instance is running, so when you are finished using NITRC-CE, you want to stop your instance.

Go back to your EC2 Dashboard Instances page.

Right click on the instance where it says "running" and select "Stop" to shutdown the instance or "Terminate" to shutdown the instance and delete the attached storage volume.

Any questions, e-mail nitrcinfo@nitrc.org.