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.
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 $0.02 / GB. Data transfers to areas outside the Cornell network will be more expensive. There is no charge for data transfers from Cornell to AWS. As of 2024, AWS now charges for public IP addresses.
Logins are only available from the CNF Thin systems or CNF Windows systems. JetStream logins are additionally available from the public Internet.
You will receive an ssh private key for login.
Use the following Linux command to login from a Linux computer such as CNF Thin:
ssh -Y -i </path/to/private_key_file.pem> <username>@<ip_address>
Running your session inside of VNC has two major advantages over just forwarding your application displays over X11:
Set your separate VNC password with the following command:
vncpasswd |
Do not set a View Only password.
Start your VNC server as follows:
[centos@ip-10-92-204-76 ~]$ vncserver New 'ip-10-92-204-76.ec2.internal:1 (centos)' desktop is ip-10-92-204-76.ec2.internal:1 Starting applications specified in /home/centos/.vnc/xstartup Log file is /home/centos/.vnc/ip-10-92-204-76.ec2.internal:1.log |
Make note of the display number output from the above command. In the above example, the display number is '1' ... denoted by the ':1' in the "desktop is" line of the output.
Start a new ssh session with using the -L option: EG -L 5901:localhost:5901
ssh -L <portnumber>:localhost:<portnumber> -Y -i </path/to/private_key_file.pem> <username>@<ip_address> |
In the existing ssh session from Linux or Mac, type in the following characters:
~C
This will bring up the ssh command prompt at which you can start the port forward:
ssh> -L5901:localhost:5901 Forwarding port |
Except for JetStream computers, 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 |
On Windows, we recommend using WinSCP .
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