Accessing Amazon Web Services (AWS)

To run the interactive activities for this JEDI Academy, each padawan will be granted the use of a dedicated virtual computer in the Amazon cloud. Specifically, we will launch an EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instance through Amazon Web Services (AWS) for each participant in the Academy. And, this is where you will be running JEDI. Throughout the documentation, we will refer to this as your AWS instance, or equivalently, your AWS node.

This document explains how to access your AWS node throughout the duration of the Academy. Feel free to return to it each day when is time to engage in each activity.

Some users may be tempted to run the activities on their own laptop or workstation or on an HPC platform if they have access to JEDI Environment modules. However, we discourage this. The use of AWS instances and Singularity containers allows us to provide a uniform computing environment for all so that we can focus on learning the JEDI code without the distraction of platform-related debugging.

So, please use your AWS node to do all the academy activities. The only exception is Friday afternoon, when instructors (JEDI masters) will be available to provide guidance on how you can run JEDI on the platform of your choice.

So, to participate in the activities, you will need two things:

  1. The ip address of your AWS node

  2. A password to allow you to log into it

See the table below for the first item. The password will be provided during the first activity on Monday (Getting Started). Write them down: these will not change over the course of the Academy so you will need them every day.

Note

Write down your password. Bookmark your Jupyter URL.

Though you can access your AWS node directly through ssh if you wish, we have set up a web interface to each of the nodes by means of JupyterLab. We recommend that you use the web interface because this provides a number of attractive features, including the ability to navigate the directory tree, open new terminals, transfer files, and most importantly, to conveniently display graphics.

So, to access your AWS node, open a web browser and navigate to this URL:

http://<your-ip-address>:8080

Enter your password at the prompt. You should bookmark this link because, again, it will not change - it will be yours for the entire Academy.

Important: The AWS EC2 instances (and their associated JupyterLab URLs) will only be active in the afternoons during the week of the Academy. We will create the instances on Monday so the links below will not work before then. Then, each night of the Academy (Monday-Thursday), we will shut the instances down overnight as a cost-saving measure. However, all data will be saved so you can pick up the next day precisely where you left off. Then, after our last activity on Friday afternoon, we will permanently terminate all instances.

Note

If you ever wish to leave your node up longer (for example, one evening to complete a particular activity), just make arrangements with a JEDI Master (Mark).

Now, to log into your cloud computing instance, merely select the appropriate URL from the Table above and enter the password at the prompt.

You should now see the default JupyterLab interface, which includes a directory tree displayed as an interactive (i.e. clickable) menu on the left and a large display area. At the top of the display area you should see several tabs. One is labeled Console 1. This is a Jupyter python console, capable of interpreting python commands. Another tab is labeled ubuntu with a local ip address. This is an ssh terminal, running bash. From here you have access to the linux command line. This is where we will be doing most of our work.

For more tips on how to work with the Jupyter interface, see the first activity on Monday.

If you are unable to link to the web interface, you can access the node directly through ssh, as mentioned above. To follow this method, you first need to acquire the academy-virginia.pem file from a JEDI master which contains an ssh key for authentication. Then you should use the -Y option to ssh to set up X forwarding as follows (remember that your username is ubuntu):

ssh -i academy-virginia.pem -Y ubuntu@<ip-address>

Then you can use the linux feh application to display image files over the internet (this application is available both inside and outside the Singularity container). Or, you can scp the files to your local machine (using the same pem file for authentication) and view them locally.

AWS node assignments

First Name

Last Name

AWS Node ip address

Shady

Ahmed

174.129.67.51

Hernan G

Arango

18.204.144.71

Kriti

Bhargava

18.208.92.249

Keith

Brewster

18.235.43.18

Hui

Christophersen

23.21.130.44

James

Cipriani

3.208.120.87

Jiarui

Dong

3.208.171.74

David

Dowell

3.212.243.250

Jeff

Duda

3.216.15.104

Emanuele

Emili

3.221.205.101

Chengfeng

Feng

3.221.254.198

Mary

Forsythe

34.200.158.120

Sergey

Frolov

34.202.52.4

Zhichang

Guo

34.224.76.129

Jennifer

Haase

34.226.186.206

Gemma

Halloran

34.231.72.30

Cenlin

He

35.153.77.252

Alamgir

Hossan

35.168.218.167

Wei

Huang

35.168.226.197

Todd

Hutchinson

44.193.148.148

Kayo

Ide

44.193.160.99

Jianjun

Jin

44.193.170.67

Erin

Jones

44.193.185.72

Min-Jeong

Kim

44.193.187.165

Anton

Kliewer

44.193.95.60

Alexander

Kurapov

50.16.149.183

Allen

Lenzen

50.17.25.59

Yonzuo

Li

52.0.132.138

Hui

Liu

52.0.214.31

Katherine

Lukens

52.2.246.204

Lorenzo

Milazzo

52.20.176.130

Andrew

Moore

52.200.16.119

Malaquias

Pena

52.200.23.197

Steve

Penny

52.207.119.185

Andrea

Piacentini

52.207.126.55

Jonathan

Poterjoy

52.21.103.245

Rick

Rawlins

52.22.66.48

Ilya

Rivin

52.44.167.119

Mojgan

Rostaminia

52.45.119.45

Narges

Shahroudi

52.45.92.19

Jeremiah

Sjoberg

52.54.34.174

Susan

Spoddiglane

52.72.9.107

Aneesh

Subramanian

54.84.70.106

Xiaoxu

Tian

54.145.18.156

Samuel

Trahan

54.147.146.250

Hongli

Wang

54.156.23.225

Brett

Wilt

54.158.75.61

Jiangtao

Xu

54.159.212.159

Zhifeng

Yang

54.162.162.60

Edward

Zaron

54.162.57.5

Minghua

Zheng

54.163.137.231

Thomas

Auligne

54.91.192.102


Contact Mark Miesch (miesch@ucar.edu) if you have any problems or questions.