Overview
Unity is the College of Arts and Sciences' high-performance computing (HPC) cluster. It can be used free of charge by any researcher in the college. Currently we have about 120 compute nodes; about half the nodes were purchased by the college (these are available for any college researcher's use) and the other half by individual researchers (these may be reserved for that research group's exclusive use or may be shared with other Unity users). This article is intended to get you started using Unity and direct you to other documentation.
Getting an account
You use your OSU account (name.#) to access Unity but we need to add your account to the group that can access Unity before you can log in.
Request access to Unity.
Logging in
Using OnDemand
The easiest way to access Unity is through OnDemand, an OSC-developed web interface widely used by HPC centers.
After you log in to OnDemand, you can get a command-line prompt in your web browser, transfer files in a graphical interface, open a full Linux desktop, or open several interactive applications (currently Matlab and Jupyter Notebook).
Using the command line
Unity also offers a more traditional command-line interface accessible through ssh.
From a Windows, Mac or another Linux system connected to an ASC network, you can type
$ ssh name.#@unity.asc.ohio-state.edu
at a command prompt (substitute your name.# for name.#).
Windows users have historically used PuTTY (available in Software Center on ASC computers, or download the PuTTY package for personally-owned computers), but Windows 10 now includes an ssh client.
If you are not on an ASC network (for example, from OSU Wireless or from home), you’ll need to connect through ASCTech's jump host (preferred) or connect to the ASC VPN first.
Going further
You may want to look at our walk-through of typical Unity usage.
We also have a help section of frequently-asked questions, how-to guides and best practices to help you get the most out of Unity.
Unity is modeled after clusters at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC); much of OSC's documentation is also relevant. You'll find links to this and more in our References section.