How to Create VM & HPC Cluster in Ansys Gateway powered by AWS
Ansys Gateway powered by AWS is a cloud platform which is used to provision virtual machines or clusters and install pre-configured computer-aided engineering (CAE) and computer-aided design (CAD) applications on it.
In this LinkedIn Article, we're going to show you how to define Project Spaces and deploy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters.
Once you log into Ansys Gateway powered by AWS you'll see the “my workspace” homepage. You can work on multiple projects and all the resources for each specific project are grouped into a project space.
As you can see, all the different project spaces are listed on the “my workspace” homepage. You can choose between the “tile” or “table” views depending on your preference. Each project space can have any combination of virtual machines, HPC clusters, and file storage servers or predefined services. Tenant administrators have the option to create a project space.
Once you click on “create new project space”, you can name the project space and provide a short description. Select the time zone you want to use. You have the option to select the shutdown timer for the virtual machines in the project space. For instance, if you set the timer for 30 minutes and no user is online during that time, then the virtual machine will shut down. Similarly, you can set a timer for disconnected users.
Select the availability zones for resources in this project space. Once you've made those Selections in the project space, you can add any new resource in this workspace.
Let's walk through how to create a Virtual Machine (VM):
Click on the virtual machine button to launch a wizard which will walk you through different options for creating the virtual machine. To start with, you will have an option to name the virtual machine and select the availability Zone where you would like to place this virtual machine.
You can provide an optional description for the virtual machine. In this example, we added a name for our demo. Select a template to start with a pre-configured virtual machine. Select windows or Linux operating systems. Browse and add a pre-configured application or multiple applications for virtual machines.
Once you select an application, you will be provided with options to install the application with the configuration you want. The options you select will be passed to the application to save you time. You can install multiple applications on the virtual machine. Once you've chosen the applications, you have the option to select the hardware you would like to use for this virtual machine. Here, I'm choosing c6i instance.
Once the hardware is selected, you can choose the disk type and disk size for your machine. The operating system is installed in default C drive. You can also select additional data disks for D drive if you want extra space.
Use the tagging feature to add additional custom tags to make finding resources faster and easier. Once you have selected all the different options, you'll be able to review and save them as a template. Instead of having to repeat this process every time, you can use the template to quickly create new virtual machines with the same settings.
You'll see the virtual machine is created and Ansys Mechanical is installing, as well as Ansys Discovery.
Now, let's create an HPC cluster using the HPC cluster wizard:
Like a virtual machine, you'll have the option to name the cluster, select the availability Zone and provide a description for the cluster. You'll also have the option to select the application package that you want to install.
When you select the cluster package, all the required applications will be selected by default. Like the virtual machine, after selecting the application, you will select the hardware and the number of nodes that you would like to create for this cluster.
Finally, you'll get to review all the options that you have selected and create a cluster. Your cluster is all set and ready to use.
As you have seen, setting up a project space and starting your first virtual machine and clusters is fast and simple with Ansys Gateway powered by AWS.
If you need any support, we’re here to help you. Contact our cloud team.