Overview

An intuitive, innovative, and interactive interface to remote computing resources

Open OnDemand helps computational researchers and students efficiently utilize remote computing resources by making them easy to access from any device. It helps computer center staff support a wide range of clients by simplifying the user interface and experience.

Key Benefits & Impact

• Key benefit to you, the end user: You can use any web browser to access resources at a computing service provider.
• Key benefit to you, the computer center staff: A wide range of clients/needs can utilize your computing resources.
• Overall impact: Users are able to use remote computing resources faster and more efficiently.

Features & More Information

Open OnDemand is an NSF-funded open-source HPC portal based on OSC’s original OnDemand portal. The goal of Open OnDemand is to provide an easy way for system administrators to provide web access to their HPC resources, including, but not limited to:

• Plugin-free web experience
• Easy file management
• Command-line shell access
• Job management and monitoring across different batch servers and resource managers
• Graphical desktop environments and desktop applications

See the documentation for installation directions, app development tutorials, and an overview of the components and applications that make up OnDemand. We also have a walkthrough video showing the various components of an Open OnDemand instance available.

Available Applications

Most of the most popular scientific applications as easilier made available to clients via Open OnDemand. A regularly updated list of these is available in the documentation and includes software such as:

• Abaqus
• ANSYS
• COMSOL
• MATLAB
• Jupyter
• RStudio
• QGIS
• Paraview
• STATA
• Tensorboard

Organizations using OnDemand

Below is a list of organizations that have deployed Open OnDemand. Please contact us via the news list if your organization is not on this list and should be included!

We also have testimonial comments and links to local OnDemand information for many of these organizations.

Run your own live demo

There are multiple ways you can have a demo Open OnDemand instance running in minutes:

1. Using Docker. Just follow the instructions in the HPC Toolset Tutorial
2. Using Vagrant. Just follow the steps listed in the ood-images-full README.
3. Using the Science Gateways hosting service. Instructions are listed in the sgci-ood-image README.
4. Using one of the major commercial cloud vendors, each of which have preconfigured instances in their marketplaces:
   • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
   • Microsoft Azure
   • Google Cloud

Project and Feature Roadmap

Upcoming Releases

Click here for a list of upcoming planned releases

Open OnDemand 2.0 Project

Click here for details on the Open OnDemand 2.0 project

Tell us what features you want to be added to OnDemand!

• Add new feature requests or bug reports on the project issues page (requires free GitHub account)
• Post a suggestion or review existing suggestions on our Discourse instance
• Send an email to us on the news list

See a list and comment on community requested features we are already planning on working. Note - you must be logged in to GitHub to see this list.

Collaboration and Financial Model

The Open OnDemand team welcomes and encourages opportunities to collaborate on proposals with members of our community in response a variety of solicitations. Examples of potential collaboration roles our team can have include developing and delivering related client education and training programs, and providing extended support services for software deployment and custom workflow development. Please contact us via the news list if you would like to discuss a potential collaboration.

Please consider contributing to the code repository on Github. Since January 2016 there have been over 8,000 commits to the code base, but we can always use additional development help!

Currently, the primary source of funding for the development of Open OnDemand is via an NSF award. The long term sustainability model for Open OnDemand is to get support from a variety of sources and types as listed the below, with current examples in parentheses. Please free free to contact the Open OnDemand team with additional suggestions or for more details.

• Direct grants (e.g. NSF, Google)
• Institutional adopters contributions (e.g. Texas A&M code contributions)
• Institutional service / development contracts (no current ones)
• Software / hardware provider engagements (e.g. Intel case studies, NVIDIA GTC presentations)

Project Cybersecurity

Open OnDemand does not utilize Java and thus is not vulnerable to any log4j exploit. While we are not aware of any vulnerabilities in underlying system tools (e.g. SLURM, Imod) or applications commonly utilized with Open OnDemand (e.g. MATLAB, Paraview), we strongly recommend that all sites thoroughly evaluate any system tools and applications in use.

Trusted CI , the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence conducted an in-depth vulnerability assessment of Open OnDemand, completing it in December 2018. This assessment included a careful review of the code, increasing our confidence in its security. The Ohio Supercomputer Center addressed the implementation issues (bugs) that were found during this review, producing a more robust revision of Open OnDemand.

In January, 2021, The Open OnDemand team and Trusted CI began another engagement to to accomplish three distinct objectives:Integration of security automation into DevOps flows; Skills transfer for vulnerability assessment; Development of needed security policies, practices, and procedures. Upon completion of this project, Trusted CI issued a report and the Open OnDemand team is now much better positioned with regards to security dev ops.

If you have security concerns or think you have found a vulnerability in Open OnDemand that you want to responsibly disclose, please contact us directly via email on the news list linked above or utilizing the “Report a Potential Security Incident” form on the OSC website.

Where to Learn More!

Monthly Community Meetings and Open Office Hours

The Open OnDemand community hosts a monthly “Open OnDemand Tips and Tricks” webinar on the first Thursday of the month at 10am PT/ 11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET. More details on specific agendas and the Zoom coordinates are available in this Discourse thread

The Open OnDemand development team hosts a monthly “Open Office Hours” webinar on the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 11:15 AM - 12:45PM Eastern time zone. This time was selected to allow for our European colleagues to be able to connect in the late afternoon and our West Coast colleagues to connect in the morning (sorry Alaska and Hawaii;). More details on specific agendas and the Zoom coordinates are available in this Discourse thread

Webinars / Videos

Conferences / Publications

Branding

Open OnDemand branding assets are available in the GitHub repository. Organizations are encouraged to utilize them in their own presentations and installations.

Software Licensing

Open OnDemand code is released under the MIT License. Documentation and most publications are released under the CC BY 4.0 License

Maintained by OSC

This project is maintained by the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), a member of the Ohio Technology Consortium, the technology and information division of the Ohio Department of Higher Education.