Category: Tutorial

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Teaching Tutorial UCloud Webinars & Tutorials - video Workshop

Workshop recording: Introduction to hosting courses on UCloud

In this video we will introduce the new UCloud Courses app – a tool for hosting and managing university courses on UCloud.

Dr. Federica Lo Verso will walk you through the concept and background of the app.
You’ll get a hands-on demonstration of how to access and use the tool, explore its integration with GitHub, and hear directly from Dr. Himanshu Khandelia, who shares his experience using UCloud Courses in real teaching scenarios.

We’ll also guide you through the application process, show you the technical and financial requirements, and give you a preview of an upcoming hands-on course.

00:00 – Introduction by Dr. Federica Lo Verso
01:23 – Background: Launch of the new UCloud Courses app
04:12 – Walkthrough: Where to find the Courses app and how to use it
07:00 – Recap of the UCloud Courses app demonstration
07:56 – Walkthrough: How the GitHub repository works
10:07 – Advantages of using UCloud Courses
11:12 – Use case introduction: Dr. Himanshu Khandelia
11:58 – Testimonial: Dr. Khandelia shares his experience using UCloud Courses
14:00 – Live demo: Dr. Khandelia shows his use of Courses and GitHub integration
23:00 – Application procedure
24:21 – Necessary resources: Compute and storage
25:28 – Re-use and update existing UCloud Courses
26:20 – Financial model for support
27:12 – Outro and teaser for the upcoming hands-on course

Categories
Supercomputing Teaching Tutorial UCloud Workshop

Workshop 11/6: UCloud Courses

Developing your own UCloud course app using a newly developed template-based approach

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through all the steps of developing a UCloud course app using our newly developed template-based approach. The concept involves having a dedicated app on UCloud for your university course that students can use in e.g., exercise/lab session and/or at home. An introduction to the approach can be found in this webinar recording.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

  • Translate your course structure to a structure that is compatible with a UCloud course app.
  • Set up the course development environment which involves cloning the GitHub repository and running a course setup script.
  • Customize the provided templates to build a UCloud course app that includes all required components – software dependencies, scripts, datasets, and more.
  • Test the course on your computer during development to ensure everything functions correctly. We will also see how the final course app looks once it has been put on UCloud.

Git/GitHub and Docker are essential tools in the UCloud course development process. In the workshop, we will give short introductions to both tools primarily aimed at those participants who do not have experience with them. Participants can benefit from following introductory tutorials to Git and Docker in advance, although this is not a requirement.

Date: 11 June 2025

Time: 12:30-14:30 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Target audience: Researchers and teachers across all departments at all the Danish universities

Technical Level: Basic to Advanced

Sign up for this workshop.

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Tutorial Webinars & Tutorials - video Workshop

Workshop Recording: AI Applications on DeiC Interactive HPC UCloud – Harnessing Hardware & Tools for AI Development

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction and welcome
00:50 – Introduction to UCloud
05:27 – DeiC Interactive HPC website
06:07 – UCloud: Log in
07:06 – UCloud: HPC providers on the UCloud platform
11:08 – UCloud: Initial resource allocations in “My workspace”
12:27 – UCloud: Storage in “My workspace”
13:28 – UCloud: Resources and applications for new resource allocations
13:50 – UCloud: Completing the resource application
21:05 – UCloud: Resource pools and limits (what does it cost?)
23:05 – UCloud: Apps, the app store, applications index in UCloud docs
26:00 – UCloud: Advanced use cases and integration patterns

27:45 – UCloud: Transcriber: Intro and resource needs
30:08 – UCloud: Transcriber: Uploading files inside a project
31:20 – UCloud: Transcriber: Finding and launching Transcriber
32:00 – UCloud: Transcriber: Run Transcriber for the first time (Completing the app launch screen)
34:28 – UCloud: Transcriber: Running multiple Transcriber jobs simultaneously
35:00 – UCloud: Transcriber: Import previous Transcriber job parameters
35:35 – UCloud: Transcriber: Opening running jobs from the “Recent runs” pane
37:15 – UCloud: Transcriber: Transcriber output directories (Jobs folder)
38:26 – UCloud: Transcriber: Transcriber outputs in “Recent runs”
39:54 – UCloud: Transcriber: Output inspection and data download of zip file

41:36 – UCloud: Chat UI: Introduction
43:27 – UCloud: Chat UI: Run Chat UI for the first time (Completing the app launch screen)
48:40 – UCloud: Chat UI: First look at the Chat UI interface (disable new sign-ups and download a model)
52:36 – UCloud: Chat UI: Including documents to support Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) (i.e. supplementing the model with an additional document)
57:18 – UCloud: Chat UI: Extend the job time on any UCloud job (if needed)
58:28 – UCloud: Chat UI: Text-to-image generation (stable diffusion with a standard LLM model)
1:01:45 – UCloud: Chat UI: RAG for (best guess) document summarization (beware of model hallucinations)

1:04:45 – UCloud: Label Studio: Introduction
1:05:15 – UCloud: Label Studio: Run Label Studio for the first time (Completing the app launch screen)
1:07:55 – UCloud: Label Studio: First look at the Label Studio interface
1:09:40 – UCloud: Label Studio: Brief view of the Label Studio documentation
1:10:52 – UCloud: Label Studio: Introduction to the coming “Speech Analyser” application
1:15:45 – UCloud: Label Studio: Documentation

1:16:08 – Conclusion

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Teaching Tutorial

Webinar 30/4: Introduction to hosting courses on UCloud

Teachers mark your calendars for April 30!

The DeiC Interactive HPC consortium partners have organised an online webinar about the newly developed concept of UCloud courses.

The webinar is open to researchers from all Danish universities.

If you already know that you would like to use UCloud for a course in the fall of 2025, now is the time to reach out.

In this webinar we will cover:

  1. The newly developed concept of UCloud Courses
  2. The advantages of hosting university courses on UCloud
  3. The teacher application procedure (front office support, financial model and more)
  4. Teacher experiences with hosting courses on UCloud
  5. Q&A 

Details:

Date: April 30 2025
Time: 13:00 – 14:00
Duration: 1 hour

Did you miss the webinar. Don’t worry, the recording is now available.

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Interactive HPC Supercomputing Tutorial UCloud UCloud status

No More Waiting for Resources

Streamline your workflow when using DeiC Interactive HPC

Have you ever experienced delays due to high demand for computing resources on UCloud (DeiC Interactive HPC)? The key to faster access and reducing system strain is efficient resource management.

Over-requesting can lead to unnecessary waiting because DeiC Interactive HPC operates by allocating resources to users as the requested resources become available, without the use of priority queues. Consequently, if you select a large machine for a relatively small task, you will need to wait for other tasks requested for these larger but fewer machines to finish, leading to prolonged waiting.

“Users with little or no experience in assessing the amounts of resources needed have a tendency to request more than they actually need.  This causes unnecessary queues and frustration for other users. However, we also see experienced users choosing the large machines simply out of habit instead of starting small, and subsequently migrate to a larger machine only when necessary.”

Jes Elgin, Cloud Engineer at DeiC Interactive HPC

To avoid delays, users need to accurately assess and request only the necessary resources for their task. Starting with conservative estimates can expedite access and improve overall system efficiency.

“Choosing small will always give you a head start as there are more small machines, and you can always upgrade to a large machine if you need it. You don’t have to start over, and you won’t lose any data.”

Jes Elgin, Cloud Engineer at DeiC Interactive HPC

**TIP!** Did you know that the likelihood of obtaining a machine right away is higher the less resources you request?

So, choose your machine based on a qualified estimate of resources needed. If unsure start small and seek advice from experienced colleagues or the DeiC Front Office.

For optimal use of interactive HPC and to enhance your research, consult our guide on Interactive HPC Best Practices.

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Interactive HPC Supercomputing Tutorial UCloud UCloud status

New way to use SSH for accessing apps on Interactive HPC 

One minute! 

That’s how long it took to set up the new SSH access to DeiC Interactive HPC applications. 

If SSH is of interest to you, you probably know that DeiC Interactive HPC applications have recently experienced limitations in providing a reliable and scalable solution for accessing their services using Secure Shell Protocol (SSH).

The challenges were attributed to a limited number of available IP addresses from the common pool on their platform, along with the implementation of a more scalable solution. The latter proved to be burdensome, as acquiring multiple new IP addresses would not provide the scalability required.
However, DeiC Interactive HPC has launched a new solution for Secure Shell Protocol access that eliminates the need for multiple IP addresses. This new solution is based on ports which are much more scalable. Therefore, users can now access DeiC Interactive HPC applications using SSH with ease.

To access this new solution, users only need to create a private/public key or use an existing one and add the public key to their account at Interactive HPC. Then select one of the supported applications and follow the documentation. Supported applications include AlmaLinux Xfce vJun2023, Rsync v3.2.7, Terminal Ubuntu vJun2023, Terminal Debian vJun2023, Terminal AlmaLinux vJun2023, Ubuntu Xfce vJun2023, and JupyterLab v4.0.2. Soon to be added to this list are RStudio and all the Coder applications.

With this new solution in place, users can now enjoy pure command-line bliss without any limitations or challenges:

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Teaching Tutorial

Teaching through UCloud

New webinar on Teaching through UCloud

The webinar aims to show how to utilize UCloud in terms of resources for students and teachers. In particular examples related to project management, software ready to use, assistance in the teacher and student workflows will be discussed.

View the one hour recorded webinar and Q&A from webinar chat.