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Through an enterprise agreement with Amazon Web Services, CNF is pleased to offer a subset of its standard software tools running in the AWS cloud on virtual machines.

Available Software

Fees

CNF will rebill the hourly cost of the running virtual computer to your CNF project/account. Charges are only incurred while the computer is in a running state (uptime) – once shutdown, no more charges are incurred until the computer is again booted. The hourly cost itself varies depending on the specifications (number of virtual CPUs, amount of memory) of the virtual computer. You will also incur one hour of machine up time for CNF computing staff to setup the machine.

For example, if you choose a virtual machine with a $2.50 / hour charge and the machine is up and running for 2 hours, you will be charged 1 hour setup time plus the two hours the machine is running, for a total of $7.50 .

CNF will also rebill the cost of any AWS Marketplace software.

AWS may also incur storage costs and data transfer costs. CNF will also rebill these costs. We do not expect normal disk usage to exceed $5/month. Data transfer costs from AWS to Cornell run $0.02 / GB. There is no charge for data transfers from Cornell to AWS.

Getting Started

  1. Contact any CNF staff member
  2. Based on your memory, cpu, software, and cost requirements, CNF Computing will assemble an appropriate AWS virtual machine and set up a login account for you.
  3. CNF Computing will boot the virtual machine for you at an agreed upon time.
  4. At the agreed upon time, login via ssh and start computing. Remember, you are being charged for the uptime of the machine.
  5. Transfer your data off the machine.
  6. Shut down the machine.
  7. If you need the machine to be rebooted, please contact CNF Computing to arrange a time for the machine to be rebooted.
  8. Once you are completely done, please contact CNF Computing to delete the virtual machine.

How to Login

Logins are only available from the CNF Thin systems or CNF Windows systems.

You will receive an ssh private key for login.

Linux/Mac Commandline

Use the following Linux command to login from a Linux computer such as CNF Thin:

ssh -Y -i </path/to/private_key_file.pem> <username>@<ip_address>

Windows with Putty

  1. Download Putty . If you download the individual binaries, you will need both "putty" and "puttygen" .
  2. Start your X11 server. We recommend XMing .
  3. Use PUTTYGen to convert your ssh private key to a Putty key (from a .pem key to a .ppk)
    1. Open PUTTYgen
    2. Click "Conversions" and then click "import key"
    3. Find the key file sent to you by CNF Computing, select the key file, and click "Open"
    4. Click "Save private key" to save the key as a Putty key file (.ppk)
  4. Run Putty
    1. Go to Connection - SSH - Auth
    2. On the right where it says "Private key file for authentication", browse to the key you created with PUTTYgen.
    3. Go to Connection - SSH - X11 and check "Enable X11 forwarding"
    4. Go to Session, and for the Host Name, type in the ip address of the remote AWS computer.
    5. Click "Open".
    6. When prompted, enter in your AWS username. You will not be prompted for a password.

Transferring Files

The lab transfer share is mounted as /cnflab , the same as on the CNF Conversion Computers and CNF Thin computers. Keep in mind disk space is limited on the Lab Transfer Share – do not use this share for large files. Instead, use SFTP to transfer files from any computer on the CNF network to the AWS conversion cloud. From the AWS conversion cloud, you can SFTP out to remote.cnf.cornell.edu or to jeol9500.cnf.cornell.edu for the JEOL9500 .

When using SFTP to connect into the AWS conversion cloud from CNF Thin, you will use a slightly modified version of the sftp command:

sftp -o "IdentityFile=/path/to/keyfile.pem" username@ip_address 

 

Windows

On Windows, we recommend using WinSCP .

  1. For the hostname, use the IP address of the AWS computer.
  2. For the username, use your AWS username.
  3. Do not enter in a password. Instead, click "Advanced"
    1. Go to SSH - Authentication
    2. For the Private Key file, use either the originally sent private key or your PUTTYGen converted private key.

How to Shut Down a Virtual Computer

Use the following command from a prompt on the virtual computer (type the command exactly as shown below... reversing the order or arguments may cause the command to not work):

sudo shutdown -h now

 

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