// Using Explore PaaS/ADAPT


EXPLORE’S VM ENVIRONMENT

ADAPT’s virtualization (VM) environment provides all users access to a set of login nodes and standard Linux VMs for data discovery and analysis. Several common, scientific applications are preloaded on these virtual nodes.

  • Multiple occurrences of that VM may also be requested.
  • Users are given user level access to VMs (not root).

VM Utilization

ADAPT’s System Administrators will work with users to understand their requirements and provision resources.

*When VMs are no longer required, please submit a ticket to notify the ADAPT team so that VMs can be spun down and resources can be re-provisioned.

Operating Systems

Explore/ADAPT
CentOS Stream 8
Rocky Linux 8
CentOS 8
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Use of ADAPT requires basic Linux usage skills. Please be sure you achieve competence in the concepts and commands explained in these resources, before using ADAPT:


Explore Flavors

In Explore, we use a naming convention for Flavors that specifies both the node type and the node size. The A prefix specifies an AMD CPU, a C prefix specifies Intel compute nodes, and (when available), G will specify GPUs. The number corresponds to the generation, so higher numbers are generally newer CPUs. Finally, following a dot, the Flavor name specifies the size, with "medium" corresponding to roughly a quarter of a node. Hence, A2.medium specifies an AMD Rome instance with 15 cores and 120GB of RAM. Similarly, a "C1.nano" is an Intel Haswell node with one core and 10GB of RAM.

The following tables summarize the available flavors:

A2 Family CPU Cores Memory
A2.xlarge AMD Rome 7452 60 480
A2.large AMD Rome 7452 30 240
A2.medium AMD Rome 7452 15 120
A2.small AMD Rome 7452 7 56
A2.nano AMD Rome 7452 3 24
A2.pico AMD Rome 7452 1 8
A1 Family CPU Cores Memory
A1.xlarge AMD Naples 7551 60 240
A1.large AMD Naples 7551 30 120
A1.medium AMD Naples 7551 15 60
A1.small AMD Naples 7551 7 28
A1.nano AMD Naples 7551 3 12
A1.pico AMD Naples 7551 1 4
C2 Family CPU Cores Memory
C2.xlarge Broadwell E5-2650 v4 20 240
C2.large Broadwell E5-2650 v4 10 120
C2.medium Broadwell E5-2650 v4 5 60
C2.small Broadwell E5-2650 v4 2 24
C2.nano Broadwell E5-2650 v4 1 12
C1 Family CPU Cores Memory
C1.xlarge Haswell E5-2697 v3 24 240
C1.large Haswell E5-2697 v3 12 120
C1.medium Haswell E5-2697 v3 6 60
C1.small Haswell E5-2697 v3 3 30
C1.nano Haswell E5-2697 v3 1 10
G1 Family CPU Cores Memory GPUs
G1.medium Skylake SP - Xeon Gold 5118 10 120 2x V100
G1.small Skylake SP - Xeon Gold 5118 5 60 1x V100

The NCCS recommends new users start with a small flavor for initial set up. We will then work with users to grow their resources based on the observed usage patterns. Specialty hardware such as GPUs are available as a shared resource via the Slurm scheduler.

Software (Representative)

ADAPT users have employed the following software in their work:

LINUX SOFTWARE WINDOWS SOFTWARE
AMES Stereo Pipeline ArcGIS Desktop
eCognition ArcGIS Pro
Ganglia eCognition (user must provide license)
GDAL GNU Octave
Grads IDL (user must provide license)
IDL (limited licenses available) MATLAB (user must provide license)
Imagemagik Qgis
Mapserver R/R Studio
MATLAB (user must provide license)
Maven
NetCDF/HDF libraries
PGSC GDAL
Qgis
R
SciKit
MongoDB
Postgres

When additional software is needed, users may load the software in local, personal directories. If the software requires elevated privileges, users may seek out assistance from ADAPT system administrators by contacting us.

Some of these tools have been made accessible through the module utility. This allows the user to log-in, run a few commands, and load pre-installed software into their environment, and begin using the software that they require. To learn more about the module command and the software it supports on ADAPT, go to the following page:

MODULES ON ADAPT

//  ACCESSING ADAPT VMS

ACCESSING ADAPT INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO

Learn how to access and log in to a virtual machine on the ADAPT system. Instructions include: 1) accessing ADAPT Linux VMs from external Linux systems; 2) accessing ADAPT Linux VMs from external Windows systems; and 3) accessing ADAPT Windows VMs directly through a web browser.


NOTE: These instructions are for users who have configured DIRECT MODE access to NCCS systems.

USER TYPES ACCESSING WINDOWS VMs ACCESSING LINUX VMs
WINDOWS USERS Guacamole $ ssh adapt.nccs.nasa.gov
MAC USERS Guacamole $ ssh adapt.nccs.nasa.gov
LINUX USERS Guacamole $ ssh adapt.nccs.nasa.gov

NCCS SUPPORTED TOOLS

  • ArcGIS Desktop/Pro – Global imaging software (Windows)
  • Ganglia – Resource monitoring software (Linux)
  • Guacamole – Web browser access to Windows virtual machines
  • JupyterHub – Computational environment for creating Jupyter notebook documents
  • pdsh – Parallel shell to launch jobs across multiple VMs simultaneously
  • Prism GPU Cluster – Systems using high-speed storage and GPUs to enable high-performance computing.
  • SLURM Workload Manager – Job scheduler/running jobs

EXTERNAL TOOLS (FREEWARE)

  • Filezilla – File transfer system (Mac, Windows, Linux)
  • MobaXterm – ssh client with Xserver (Linux access through Windows)
  • Qgis – Global imaging software (Linux)
  • WinSCP – File transfer system (Windows)

OTHER TOOLS

  • Python – high-level interpreted programming language.

// DATA COLLECTIONS

ADAPT provides users access to centralized, commonly used data collections such as LANDSAT, MODIS, MERRA/MERRA2, and NGA*.

  • Datasets are not static–additional data is continually being added.
  • If users identify new data that is of interest to an expanded audience, it can be staged for general access as well.

*Note: Access to NGA data requires a signed agreement and adherence to specific usage policies.

DATA COLLECTIONS

// STORAGE

All file systems on ADAPT, including home and nobackup, are shared and accessible across all VMs. 

STORAGE

// ABoVE USERS

ADAPT virtual environment was originally created for ABoVE users to conduct research. It has since expanded and evolved to support numerous NCCS users.

NEW USERS

If you are an ABoVE user new to ADAPT, please follow these instructions to gain access.

ABoVE USERS

ABoVE DATA COLLECTIONS

See Data Collections page to see available ABoVE data collections.

DATA COLLECTIONS

CITING ADAPT IN PUBLICATIONS

When researchers publish research based on the use of NCCS resources, please acknowledge these NASA-provided resources with language similar to this example:

“Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at Goddard Space Flight Center.”

ORTHORECTIFYING DATA ON ADAPT

Please see the PGC Imagery Utilities Guide developed in conjunction with the Polar Geospatial Center detailing how to use the PGC Imagery Utilities on ADAPT.

// ACCOUNT INFO 

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See information about account eligibility, set-up, and maintenance.

GET STARTED