GTC 2014 Hands-On Lab Connection Information

Connection Information

For most of the hands-on labs at GTC 2014, it's recommend you attempt to use the following connection methods, in order.  See the next section for labs which make use of a different connection mechanism.

  1. An NX client like NoMachine 3.5, NoMachine 4.0, and OpenNX - these usually provide the best user experience
  2. A VNC client - these are usually easier to setup than an NX client, but are not as bandwidth efficient
  3. The provided web-browser-based VNC client - this is the quickest option to get working, but has the most issues.

Labs With Different Connection Mechanism

The following labs use a specific connection mechanism

Specific Connection Instructions

NoMachine 3.5

This client is no longer supported by NoMachine, but it still provides the most stream lined and stable way to connect to an NX server.  While it's not possible to download directly from NoMachine, a number of educational institutions still host the installation files, and they can be found with a simple Internet search.

Once installed, follow the PDF instructions to connect to your GPU instance.

NoMachine 4.0

This is the latest release from NoMachine and available for download at their website.  While this is the latest supported version, it's more complicated to get started than with the prior release, NoMachine 3.5.

Once installed, follow the PDF instructions to connect to your GPU instance.

OpenNX

This is an open-source NX client and is supported on every major OS.  However, on Windows it can crash frequently when trying to connect to an NX server, but once connected, it seems stable.  For Windows, download the 0.16.0.725 version as the latest release does not work for Windows 7.

Once installed, follow the NoMachine 3.5 instructions as the OpenNX client is very similar.

VNC Client

There are a number of available VNC clients for every operating system.  For most labs, you will connect to port 5901 on the GPU instance with your VNC client.  

See the PDF for instructions on using the common VNC Viewer application.

Browser-based VNC Client

Most of the hands-on labs have an HTML5 VNC client located on port 80 - the standard HTTP port.  While this connection method is the quickest & easiest to start with, the client can be quirky to work with.  For example, if you switch away from the browser window with the VNC session, and then switch back, you may need to hit the 'alt' key twice to get the keyboard back into a "good" state.

This method also requires a web browser which supports websockets.  All recent versions of the major web browsers support websockets by default, but note that Internet Explorer 9 does not and will not work.

Follow the PDF for instructions on connecting with this method.

IPython Notebook

While the name has "Python" in it, not all labs using this connection mechanism are based on Python.  Labs using this technique are all browser-based and should not require any extra applications other than a supported browser.

See the instructions for getting connected to an IPython Notebook based lab.

PuTTY

PuTTY is an SSH application for Windows.  While any SSH-capable client will work, PuTTY is the most commonly used on Windows.  Another option is to use Cygwin if you already have it installed.  For OSX and Linux, please use the built-in command-line `ssh` utility.

See the instructions for connecting with PuTTY on Windows.