New remote computing options available

Hey, everyone. Hope you’re doing well out there. It’s weird being away from the office for so long, but I’m coping. The cats aren’t particularly into the daily status meetings, but I think they’ll adjust. Though I need to have a word with Frankbenberry – she’s just not putting her heart into it these days.

But I digress, I’m here to announce a couple of new services you can take advantage of, plus a small change in where you’ll get your much needed blog posts.

NEW SERVICES!

Let’s start with our two new remote desktop services. We’re ready to unleash both into production. First up is the new NoMachine server. It’s running on one of our GCE compute nodes, and we’ve got instructions on how to get to it on our site here: virtualhelpdesk.cels.anl.gov/docs/remote-access/virtual-desktop-computing/

From an internal network, or a properly configured SSH session, you can fire up a virtual desktop on this machine using the NoMachine client. It’s pretty impressive, and we’re hopeful it will make the coming virtual/remote internships a little more tolerable for the students!

But we’ve also got Windows! The old windows remote desktop server is at end of life, so we’ve got a new one to replace it that’s built from the ground up to be more functional from the moment you login. It runs Box Drive, which means your entire Box folder is useable to you as a network folder, plus it has all the apps we think you’d expect. Instructions on how to connect are at the link above as well.

If you find programs you need aren’t available, drop us a line at [email protected] and we’ll do what we can to get you going.

NEW BLOG SITE!

Lastly, now that we’ve got a nice and reliable server infrastructure in the Enterprise Data Center over in building 386, I feel confident in hosting our blog back on our servers. So, from now on, you can get your Dispatches at virtualhelpdesk.cels.anl.gov/blog/. All the previous stuff is copied there, and I’ll be putting a pointer on the old site to reach here as well.

Thanks, everyone! Stay safe, and don’t lick any flagpoles!