Introduction to HLRS Systems

A three-day beginner course on using the HPC systems at HLRS

For general information on our HPC systems, see our Wiki

Prerequisites

This course assumes you have a working HLRS account. Before attending, make sure the following steps are complete:

  1. Your project supervisor has set up an account for you
  2. You have submitted your completed user form to accounting-info@hlrs.de (and sent the original per post)
  3. You have set up two-factor authentication
  4. Your IP address is registered at HLRS, or you have VPN access set up

If your account is not yet active, follow the guide below before the course starts:

(Re-)Activate your User Account

Step-by-step guide to activating or reactivating your HLRS account

Course Material

This course is built as HTML pages, so your browser's normal Back and Forward buttons work for moving between the course pages.

Use your arrow keys ← and → to navigate the slides. To search within the slides, use Ctrl + Shift + F. The browser's own Ctrl + F only finds text on the current slide.

Lectures Hands-on
Day 1 Welcome & Basic Linux Bash Basics
Day 2 Security Essentials & Cluster Overview & Practical Pitfalls & SSH Tunnels & Software Environments File System & Data Transfer & Tunneling & Python Setup
Day 3 Modules, Programming Environment & PBS Batch System & Available Software, Starting Jobs Modules & Compiling & Submitting Jobs

Schedule

Day 1 Getting Started with Linux · 09:00–13:00
09:00Welcome & Course Overview
09:15SSH & Bash Basics
10:20Break
10:50Hands-on: SSH & Unix Shell Basics
Day 2 Cluster Orientation & Practical Skills · 09:00–13:00
09:00Quiz: Day 1
09:10Security Essentials
09:30HLRS Systems Overview
09:50Practical Pitfalls
10:10SSH Tunneling & Git behind the Firewall
10:25Software Environments & Containers
10:40Buffer / Q&A
11:00Break
11:30Hands-on: File Transfer & Filesystem
Day 3 Working on the Cluster · 09:00–13:00
09:00Quiz: Day 2
09:15Module & Programming Environment
09:30Batch System / PBS — Overview
09:50Energy & Cost Awareness
09:55Software Available on Hunter
10:10Profiling (overview)
10:20Example: OpenFOAM® & ParaView
10:40Break
11:10Hands-on: Modules & Job Submission

Acknowledgements

We thank the Jülich Supercomputing Centre for their support in planning this course, in particular Ilya Zhukov and Jolanta Zjupa (JSC) for sharing advice and course materials.

I. Zhukov and J. Zjupa, “Tutorials on High Performance Computing With Python: Reflections on a Decade of Teaching by the German HPC Community,” in Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2025 (PEARC '25), Columbus, OH, USA, 2025. DOI: 10.1145/3708035.3736077