Connecting to the Protected Environment

Access to the Protected Environment (PE) requires access to a project within the PE. If you do not have access to the PE, please see our documentation on projects in the PE for more information, including instructions for requesting a new project or gaining access to an existing project.

Request access to a project

Access to the PE is allowed only from University of Utah networks; if you're connecting from a device that is not on a University of Utah network, you will need to connect to the university's VPN first. You may download the VPN from vpn.utah.edu and find more information on use of the VPN within this article.

Connect to the University of Utah VPN

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Connecting to Linux Resources

The Linux cluster, Redwood, contains the majority of computational resources in the Protected Environment (PE).

Connecting with an SSH Client

SSH allows users to connect to Linux systems from the command line. We recommend testing your connection by using SSH to connect to resources in the PE. If you are unable to SSH, please contact us for support; it is unlikely that RDP or FastX will work.

SSH clients are available by default on most modern desktop operating systems. For more information, please see the CHPC's SSH documentation.

Connect to redwood.chpc.utah.edu (this does a DNS round-robin to redwood1.chpc.utah.edu and redwood2.chpc.utah.edu) using your uNID. You may want to enable X forwarding to view graphical windows; instructions for doing so can be found on the SSH documentation. Enter your password and authenticate with Duo when prompted. You should now be connected to a login node on the redwood cluster.

Connecting with FastX

FastX allows users to connect to Linux systems within a familiar desktop environment to run graphical software (in addition to terminal emulators). You can use FastX from a web browser or an application. Please see the FastX3 documentation for more information about using FastX, including how to download the FastX application.

To connect to the PE via the FastX web browser, visit redwood1.chpc.utah.edu:3300 or redwood2.chpc.utah.edu:3300 to access the login nodes of the redwood cluster, or bristlecone1.chpc.utah.edu:3300 or bristlecone2.chpc.utah.edu:3300 to access the interactive (bristlecone) nodes. If your group has a designated owner node, you can also connect to it with FastX.

Connecting with Open OnDemand

Open OnDemand is a web portal that provides access to CHPC file systems. In the PE, Open OnDemand can be accessed at https://pe-ondemand.chpc.utah.edu. This is the best option for GUI-based applications such as MATLAB, Jupyter Notebooks, and RStudio Server. Further documentation on the use of Open OnDemand can be found here.

Connecting to Windows Resources

The CHPC provides access to a remote Windows desktop for researchers more accustomed to a Windows environment or for those who require Windows-specific desktop applications. Instructions for connecting to the Windows server can be found on the PE Windows documentation page. The page also details the process for accessing your home directory and project space through the Windows server.

Accessing Storage

Home and group spaces are available from both the Linux cluster and the Windows server.

In this section, we refer to the name of a project's storage space as the name of project directory, which is a variable. If you have an IRB record associated with your project, name of project directory typically starts with "IRB_" and includes the IRB number, such as "IRB_01234567." If the project does not have an associated IRB record, its name usually starts with "proj_," such as "proj_example."

Accessing Project Spaces from Linux Hosts

The full (absolute) path to project data is /uufs/chpc.utah.edu/common/PE/name of project directory.

From your home directory, you can run

cd ../name of project directory

from the command line (in a terminal) to access your project space. Note that tab completion may not work initially, and your project space may not appear when using a graphical file browser or listing the contents of the parent directory, as project spaces are not mounted by default; they are mounted on an as-needed basis. Once you attempt to read from or write to a file within your project space, it should be mounted on the system, and it should appear in tab completion and when navigating directories from the command line or a graphical file browser.

Accessing Home and Project Spaces from Open OnDemand

After connecting to OnDemand within the PE, you can access your home and project storage spaces from the built-in File browser. To access these files, click on the 'Files' drop-down in the upper-left corner and select the storage space that you need to access.

Accessing Home and Project Spaces from Windows

Project spaces (such as the directory name of project directory) are available under Projects Directories (R:, S:, T:, and U:). Home directories are available under Home Directory (Z:). These are the same file systems mounted on the Linux cluster, Redwood, and are thus accessible from both Linux and Windows PE systems. For more information, please see the Windows server documentation.