1. New VSC Account#
VSC accounts are the user account system used across the VSC infrastructure. It is hence mandatory to create your own personal VSC account to access our services.
Using VSC accounts is transparent though. They are tied to your existing account in your home institute and therefore, it is not necessary to set up any additional passwords. Only a cryptographic key will be needed to access the terminal interface of the VSC clusters.
Applying for your VSC account#
UHasselt has an agreement with KU Leuven to run a shared infrastructure. Therefore the procedure is the same for both institutions.
- Who?
Access is available for faculty students (under faculty supervision), and researchers of the KU Leuven, UHasselt and their associations.
- How?
Researchers with a regular personnel account (u-number) can use the generic procedure.
If you are in one of the higher education institutions associated with KU Leuven, the generic procedure may not work. In that case, please e-mail hpcinfo@kuleuven.be to get an account. You will have to provide a public ssh key generated as described above.
Lecturers of KU Leuven and UHasselt that need HPC access for giving their courses: The procedure requires action both from the lecturers and from the students. Lecturers should follow the specific procedure for lecturers, while the students should simply apply for the account through the generic procedure.
All information about the access policy is available in English at the UGent HPC web pages.
- Who?
Access is available for faculty students (master’s projects under faculty supervision), and researchers of UGent.
- How?
Researchers and students can use the generic procedure.
- Who?
Access is available for faculty students (master’s projects under faculty supervision), and researchers of the AUHA.
- How?
Researchers can use the generic procedure.
Master students can also use the infrastructure for their master thesis work. The promotor of the thesis should first send a motivation to hpc@uantwerpen.be and then the generic procedure should be followed (using your student UAntwerpen id) to request the account.
All information about the access policy is available on the VUB HPC documentation website.
- Who?
Access is available for faculty students (under faculty supervision), and researchers of VUB and their associations.
- How?
Researchers with a regular VUB account (@vub.be) can use the generic procedure.
Master students can also use the infrastructure for their master thesis work. The promotor of the thesis should first send a motivation to hpc@vub.be and then the generic procedure should be followed to request the account.
- Who?
Check that you are eligible to use VSC infrastructure.
- How?
Ask your VSC contact for help. If you don’t have a VSC contact yet, and please get in touch with us.
Generic procedure for academic researchers#
For most researchers from the Flemish universities, the procedure has been fully automated and works by using your institute account to request a VSC account. Check below for exceptions or if the generic procedure does not work.
Open the VSC account page
Select your “home” institution from the drop-down menu and click the “confirm” button
Log in using your institution login and password
Optional You will be asked to upload your cryptographic public key. This key is need to access the terminal interface of VSC clusters. Do so if you created a SSH key pair already, otherwise it can be done at a later time.
You will be asked for your scientific domain, please pick one from the NWO classification list
Once your application is submitted, you will receive a confirmation e-mail. Click the included link to do so
At this point your account application will be reviewed by the VSC staff. Once it is approved, you will be notified via e-mail
Warning
Allow for at least half an hour for your account to be properly created after receiving the notification email about your account approval!
Note
If you can’t connect to the VSC account page , some browser extensions have caused problems (and in particular some security-related extensions), so you might try with browser extensions disabled.
Next steps#
Register for an HPC Introduction course. These are organized at all universities on a regular basis.
Information on our training program and the schedule is available on the VSC website.
Note
KU Leuven If there is no course announced, users of KU Leuven can register to the training waiting list and we will organize a new session as soon as we get a few people interested in it.
Additional information#
Your account also includes two “blocks” of disk space: your home directory and data directory. Both are accessible from all VSC clusters. When you log in to a particular cluster, you will also be assigned one or more blocks of temporary disk space, called scratch directories. Which directory should be used for which type of data, is explained in the page “Storage locations”.
Your VSC account does not give you access to all available software. You can use all free software and a number of compilers and other development tools. For most commercial software, you must first prove that you have a valid license or the person who has paid the license on the cluster must allow you to use the license. For this you can contact your local support team.