Bringing Compute and Persistent Linux Desktops to Open OnDemand with ThinLinc

General Discussion
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Hi!

We’ve started experimenting with integrating ThinLinc into OOD.

For context, Cendio develops ThinLinc (Linux VDI/ Terminal Server), and we also maintain open-source projects like noVNC and TigerVNC.

We’re happy to see how noVNC has become a key part of the OOD experience, enabling applications to be streamed directly in the browser.

The first step in this work is a simple OOD app that launches a desktop on a compute node via Slurm, with users able to connect either through the ThinLinc web client or the native client.

Later on, we’d also like to support the “HPC Desktop” approach, where users can access a persistent shared desktop outside the batch system.

The idea is to provide another option alongside the existing noVNC integration — initially driven by a request from one of our customers, but we believe it could be helpful for other sites as well, especially for those that would prefer not to set up and maintain their own VNC servers.

We’re also in active discussions with the core developers at OSC about this integration to ensure it aligns well with OOD’s roadmap and community needs.

Would be great to hear from the community what are the thoughts about persistent desktop usage and potential pains of maintaining a VNC server.

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This isn’t really related to VNC, but noVNC having no support for direct copy & paste is an issue we hear a lot about.

Also noVNC being inaccessible to screen readers is an issue.

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I would not have persistent desktops at all if I could help it. Batch systems are there for a reason. I’d want users to use them.

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Grigory:

I suspect we might have different use cases in mind here. I think there is a tremendous need for both batch and interactive interactions with HPC systems (or phrased another way, synchronous and asynchronous interfaces). Particularly with regards to pre- and post-processing steps in many workflows.

So if there is a need for interactive interactions with HPC systems in this way, there naturally is going to be a need for providing desktop like environments. And many centers (including at OSC) want to provide different types of resources / SLAs for such environments compared to those applied to our batch scheduler (e.g. Slurm) - we currently do that via Kubernetes and it’s very popular with our clients (and a lot easier for us to support / manage). I know many other centers have similar setups / approaches.

I’ll also emphasize that from an user support perspective having those desktops be persistent for some period of time is great. Without that, the slightest network interruption on the client side could result in much lost work / effort.

As such, it appears to me there is a significant potential need for what our colleagues from Cendio are offering up with ThinLinc.

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