Today, we’re announcing Sherlock OnDemand, a brand new way to use the Sherlock cluster.

Hot on the heels of the SC18 Supercomputing Conference, and right in time for the long Thanksgiving week-end, we thought that a good way to thank our users, who, from grad students to Faculty members, have been showing their appreciation and unfaltering support over the years, would be to demonstrate our commitment to provide them with innovative and easier ways to use computing resources to support their research.

This is why, after a long wait, we’re extremely pleased to announce the immediate availability of the new Sherlock OnDemand service.

A revolutionary way to work on Sherlock

Sherlock OnDemand is a completely new way to interact with the computing and data storage resources provided on Sherlock.

From the comfort of their web browser, users can now connect to Sherlock, compose, submit and monitor jobs, manage their files, and run interactive applications, such as Jupyter Notebooks, RStudio, or Tensorboard sessions.

A Sherlock shell from your browser

Yes, that means that you can now connect to Sherlock from your web browser. No SSH client required. No need to mess around in /.ssh/config anymore, no more Kerberos headaches, no more repeated two-step authentication confirmation either. Windows users rejoice!

Just point your browser to the Sherlock OnDemand login URL and shell away!

So long WinSCP!

Ever dreamed about being able to browse your files on Sherlock in a graphical way, without having to install additional programs, or mounting Sherlock’s filesystems on your local machine (sometimes awkwardly, if possible at all)?

Ever been frustrated that the Globus web interface didn’t offer a "right click > download" option?

Well, not only does Sherlock OnDemand allow all of this without the blink of an eye, but you can now view, edit, manipulate and transfer your files to (and from) Sherlock, from the comfort of your regular web browser.

All your jobs belong to Sherlock OnDemand.

Check out the queue, submit new jobs, cancel the ones you don’t like. All in one place, not a single shell command involved. Check this out!

Interactive apps

And🍒on top, interactive apps!

You can now start Jupyter Notebooks or Rstudio directly from your web browser. No more SSH tunnel to configure or convoluted setup process. Choose the application of your choice in the list of available apps, fill out the form to tune your session to your computing needs, and submit. Your interactive app will be scheduled on a compute node, and you’ll be able to connect to it from the click of a button.

Jupyter, RStudio, and Tensorboard are just the beginning! Stay tuned for more apps, coming soon to an Sherlock OnDemand browser tab near you.

Documentation

For complete details about Sherlock OnDemand, please see the documentation we’ve prepared.

And as usual, if you have any question, comment or suggestion, don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected].

Happy computing!