The Holland Computing Center is the central research computing provider for the University of Nebraska system. In addition to Linux-based clusters, we also provide the ability for researchers to run virtual machines via our OpenStack-based cloud resource. We provide a curated set of operating system images to use within OpenStack. For all Linux images with a graphical desktop environment, we pre-install X2Go Server. Since OpenStack uses SSH key-based authentication, this makes accessing the instance very convenient for researchers. They simply need to install the X2Go client package on their laptop or desktop and set it to use their OpenStack SSH key. There's no need to configure VNC, etc. access, so using X2Go provides both ease of use for the researcher and lessens the administrative effort required when creating images.
- Dr. Adam Caprez
HPC Applications Specialist
University of Nebraska Holland Computing Center