Researcher Desktop Information and Guides

Click on the create button for your preferred Operating System. This will start a timer while your Researcher Desktop is being prepared. The button will turn green when your Research Desktop is ready. You can delete a Researcher Desktop by opening its options page (using the options icon to the right of the open button). You must confirm that you are sure you want to delete the Researcher Desktop. Once deleted, it cannot be recovered.

To connect to your Windows Researcher Desktop, click the "Open" button. This will download a small file with the connection information for your Windows Researcher Desktop. Double-click the downloaded file to open your Remote Desktop Client on your local computer. You will be connected to your Windows Researcher Desktop. If this is your first time logging in, it will take a few minutes to set up your profile. When it is ready, you will be prompted for your University username and password. Once logged in, you can begin using the pre-installed applications. To access new applications, the Software Center needs to be populated with the University's site license applications. This can take up to a few hours to complete.

To connect to your Linux Researcher Desktop, click the "Open" button. Enter your University username and password when prompted. Click the blue plus button in the top left to create a new desktop session. Choose "Unity" and click Launch. If you see a pop up blocker message, just click "Connect" to go to your Researcher Desktop.

You can shelve a Researcher Desktop by opening the options page (using the options icon to the right of the open button). Shelving allows you to maintain the current state of the Researcher Desktop while releasing the associated computing resources for others to use. You can unshelve the Researcher Desktop when you need it again. Read more about shelving and unshelving here.

You can boost a Researcher Desktop by opening the options page (using the options icon to the right of the open button). Your Researcher Desktop will remain in the boosted state for 7 days. It will then downsize. At any time during those 7 days, you can request an additional 7 days by clicking the "Extend" button. The date and time of the scheduled downsize is displayed above the "Open" button on the Home page. Note: boosting and downsizing require the Researcher Desktop to reboot and any running processes or file transfers will be terminated.

There are a couple of options for rebooting:

• Soft reboot: log into your Researcher Desktop and reboot it as you would a regular laptop/desktop by clicking ‘Power Off’ or ‘Restart’.

• Hard reboot: click the options button to the right of the open button on the Home page and then click the "Hard Reboot" button. Hard rebooting shuts down the Researcher Desktop and restarts it after the power has been completely turned off, clearing the Researcher Desktop’s RAM and resetting the system.

If your Researcher Desktop shuts down, the Research Computing Portal will detect this and if you refresh the portal it will change the ‘Open’ button to a ‘Start’ button. Click this to start your Researcher Desktop up again. Once it has rebooted successfully, you will be able to access your Researcher Desktop as normal.

When you need more computation power (i.e. more cores and RAM) to carry out your research activities, you can boost your Researcher Desktop from the standard compute size (4 cores and 16GB RAM) to the boosted size (16 cores and 64GB RAM). Just click on the options button (located to the right of the open button) to navigate to the options page and then select ‘Boost’.

If you’re not actively using your Researcher Desktop for a while and would like to preserve the state of it without deleting it, you can shelve your Researcher Desktop. This saves the state of your Researcher Desktop to disk and frees the resources up for other researchers to use, helping to keep the service available to everyone. The saved state can then be un-shelved later when you need it again (loading your Researcher Desktop back to the state it was in before you shelved it).

Shelve your Researcher Desktop by clicking the ‘Shelve’ button on the options page. You can get your Researcher Desktop back by clicking the ‘Unshelve’ button on the home page - which will relaunch it with all your previous data. Read more about shelving and unshelving here.

vCPUs are portions or shares of the underlying, physical CPUs assigned to a particular Researcher Desktop. Researcher Desktops are launched in the Melbourne Research Cloud where the physical cores are hyper-threaded at a 1:2 ratio and each logical core is oversubscribed. In this way, a 4 vCPU Researcher Desktop is a single physical core machine.

To connect to your Windows Researcher Desktop, click the "Open" button. This will download a small file with the connection information for your Windows Researcher Desktop. Double-click the downloaded file to open your Remote Desktop Client on your local computer. You will be connected to your Windows Researcher Desktop. If this is your first time logging in, it will take a few minutes to set up your profile. When it is ready, you will be prompted for your University username and password. Once logged in, you can begin using the pre-installed applications. To access new applications, the Software Center needs to be populated with the University's site license applications. This can take up to a few hours to complete.