Connect to a cluster

This document explains how to establish an SSH connection to your cluster's nodes in Cluster Director. Based on the node type, connecting to a node lets you perform the following tasks:

  • Login node: manage shared file systems and submit Slurm jobs to the cluster schedulers.

  • Compute node: troubleshoot issues by letting you access logs, or manually run a node's GPU health check before you run jobs on the node.

For more information on how Compute Engine uses key-based SSH authentication to establish connections to a virtual machine (VM) instance, see About SSH connections.

Before you begin

When you access and use the Google Cloud console, you don't need to authenticate. You can automatically use Google Cloud services and APIs.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to connect to a login node in a cluster, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project:

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

These predefined roles contain the permissions required to connect to a login node in a cluster. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to connect to a login node in a cluster:

  • To view the details of a single cluster: hypercomputecluster.clusters.describe
  • To connect to a node: compute.instances.osLogin

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Connect to a cluster

The following sections explain how to connect to a login node or compute node in your cluster.

Connect to a cluster's login node

To connect to a cluster's login node through SSH by using the Google Cloud console, complete the following steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Clusters page.

    Go to Clusters

  2. In the Clusters table, in the Name column, click the name of the cluster that you want to connect to. A page that gives the details of the cluster appears, and the Details tab is selected.

  3. Click the Nodes tab.

  4. In the Login nodes section, in the Connect column, click the SSH button in the row that contains your login node. The SSH-in-browser window opens.

  5. If prompted, then click Authorize. Connecting to your node can take up to a minute to complete.

Connect to a cluster's compute node

To connect to a cluster's node through SSH by using the Google Cloud console, complete the following steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Clusters page.

    Go to Clusters

  2. In the Clusters table, in the Name column, click the name of the cluster that you want to connect to. A page that gives the details of the cluster appears, and the Details tab is selected.

  3. Click the Nodes tab.

  4. In the Compute nodes section, in the Name column, click the name of the node that you want to connect to. A page that gives the details of the node appears, and the Details tab is selected.

  5. Click SSH.

  6. If prompted, then click Authorize. Connecting to your node can take up to a minute to complete.

What's next?