Success story
Virginia TechIndustry• Education

Solution• OpenText™ Exceed™ TurboX

Virginia Tech simplifies highperformance computing usage
OpenText™ Exceed™ TurboX provides high performancegraphical remote application access, increasing productivity

Results
Real-time graphical sessions on
low-powered laptops via browser
Reduced impact on network
bandwidth with data andapplications residing together
No need for command lineinterfaces, removing barriers
to non-technical users
Browser-based, centralizedadministration provides easeof maintenance“Thanks to Exceed TurboX, applications are now much more
responsive. Users can now undertake interactive tasks,
such as visualizations in real time.”
Justin Krometis

Computational Science Specialist
Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech simplifies high performance computing usage

Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree
programs and is a leading research institution, managing a research
portfolio of more than $504 million. Located in Blacksburg, Virginia,
Virginia Tech’s main campus is home to more than 33,000 students,
living and learning in 135-plus buildings across 2,600 acres.
Researchers and students at the university use high performancecomputing (HPC) to run a range of complex simulations, analyses anddata visualizations. Students and faculty members needed to become
familiar with accessing graphical applications like MATLAB ®, via remoteshell (SSH). This would often create a barrier to entry, especially forusers with backgrounds not traditionally associated with HPC, who
need to access systems to perform complex analysis.
Additional challenges included the installation of applications on local,
low-powered devices, such as student laptops. Frequently, there would
also be a need to transfer large volumes of data from central application
servers to end-user PCs, reducing productivity for remote users.
Computational Science Specialist Justin Krometis (Advanced ResearchComputing, Virginia Tech), explained further: “Copying output datafrom central servers to end user PCs placed a strain on our network
bandwidth, especially at older faculty buildings. In addition, setting
up users was also a complex process, requiring extensive training ofstudents and faculty members. This would often lead to a significant
number of help desk requests.”

Overcoming challenges with OpenText™ Exceed™ TurboX

To overcome these challenges, Virginia Tech turned to Exceed TurboX tosimplify user setup and administration, improve application and network
performance, and increase productivity.

“Based on prior experiences with OpenText Exceed solutions for
managed application access, our director of HPC was keen to look at
its latest offering, Exceed TurboX.
“The browser-based access was an immediate benefit, making deployment to users much quicker and simpler. Plus, it runs on any
device—even students with low-powered devices were able to runhigh performance applications,” said Krometis.
Exceed TurboX enables Virginia Tech to build a number of profiles tosuit user needs. The profiles allow administrators or advanced users tospecify the applications and scripts to launch on remote UNIX® or Linux®
hosts. Users can launch these profiles to display the remote tools on theirMicrosoft® Windows®, Mac® or Linux PCs with a single click. Profiles arecentrally managed, making the deployment of updates quick and easy.

Simplicity: Eliminating command line usage

Overcoming the barrier to entry to HPC for many users, caused by thecomplexities of using a command line interface, simplifies their experience.
“Exceed TurboX helps reduce or even eliminate that barrier by
allowing them to take advantage of graphical interfaces provided
by many software applications. This makes the interface much moreintuitive; with profiles, it even means that in some cases users canaccess these applications without ever using an SSH-like commandline interface,” said Krometis.
When adding or updating applications in the computing environment,
new or updated profiles can be made available to users in minutes.
There is no reliance on users to enter new commands or amend any
scripts themselves, reducing errors and saving time.

“The centralizedbrowser administrationinterface helps us
quickly diagnose
and take action
should something
adverse happen.”
Justin Krometis

Computational Science Specialist
Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech simplifies high performance computing usage

Virginia Tech no longer has to produce detailed user guides to help
users set up individual applications on their computers. Its help desk
also receives significantly fewer support calls for these software
packages, allowing it to focus on other tasks.

Performance: Efficient network bandwidth usage

Graphical user interfaces run much quicker using Exceed TurboX thanover a traditional X11 graphical connection. In the past, some applications
would take so long to load that users would abandon the session, forcing
them to find an alternative.
“Thanks to Exceed TurboX, applications are much more responsive.
Users can undertake interactive tasks, such as generating andworking with visualizations in real-time,” said Krometis.

Productivity: Applications and data,
both in the datacenter

Exceed TurboX allows applications and data to reside together in thedatacenter. Previously, output files were copied to local machines forusers to analyze and visualize. With data sizes growing, Exceed TurboXis enabling Virginia Tech to truly take advantage of big data.
“A wholesale upgrade of our network infrastructure would be too
costly, so we needed a solution that would reduce the amount ofnetwork traffic, even though data volumes are growing. OpenText
Exceed TurboX has helped us become much more efficient in thisregard. Data remains in the datacenter; it is no longer transmitted tothe user’s device, saving time and bandwidth,” said Krometis.

Another welcome feature of Exceed TurboX is the ability for users tosubmit their jobs (some of which can run for days) and then suspend
the session. The Exceed TurboX proxy keeps their session active,
so they can shut down their laptop and later, perhaps at home or inanother campus location, they can check back on the progress of thejob. Processing continues uninterrupted in the datacenter, regardlessof the status of the laptop.
“I use Exceed TurboX a lot with the numerical computing software
Julia to generate and manipulate results from my simulations. Thesession suspension feature is very convenient for me. I can close mylaptop during a session and when I reopen it, my session and all myplots are waiting for me to continue to work on,” said Krometis.

Ease of user management, reporting and administration

The move to Exceed TurboX has provided greater reliability for Virginia
Tech. “The centralized browser administration interface helps us
quickly diagnose and take action should something adverse happen,”said Krometis.
In addition to comprehensive and easily searched system logs, theadministration interface also provides access to usage reports anduser activity. This helps the system administration team understandwhere resources are used and where they can make further refinements
for load balancing.
“Throughout deployment and since, OpenText staff have been on handand super helpful. Their experience is evident when diagnosing issues,
such as unusual workstation configurations that clash with ourcentral profile setups,” said Krometis. “Working with the OpenText
team has been a delight.”

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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