Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the difference between a website and a portal?

The term portal is used to describe a website that acts as an entry point or gateway to an array of services or resources. Obviously all sites can do this to some degree, but typically a portal will have a wide range of resources, usually including a search facility, directory of other sites, news, e-mail etc. Portals can be general or be specific to a particular industry, occupation, or field of interest. The basic and essential difference between a portal and a website is information. Portals have the facility to store volumes of data and information in one place, and this volume of data keeps increasing every day. Portal Fact Sheet

2. What is the purpose of the Portal?

The purpose of the Portal is to enhance effective access and use of HPC resources which includes (1) improving agile access to HPC computational and data storage resources by current users, (2) increasing transparent and user-friendly access to these resources by client-based “communities of practice” that have not been historical HPC users, and (3) establishing new ways that HPC can increase project cycle effectiveness and efficiencies in these user communities.

3. How do I get access to the Portal?

To obtain an HPCMP Portal account each user will go through an ‘onboarding’ process. This process is straightforward and designed to meet HPCMP security requirements and provide users enhanced support in the use of the Portal and HPC resources. For more information, go to the Applying for an Account page.

4. Does the Portal support IPv6?

While all Portals are accessible via both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, outbound access from within the Portal is limited to IPv4 only. This is because once logged into the Portal, users are placed on nodes (known as vapp nodes) that do not have direct external network connectivity. This was done in the interest of security best practices and simplicity, which resulted in using strictly IPv4 non-routable addresses for the internal private network. The vapp nodes can access outside networks via the Portal gateway node, but the first hop must use IPv4 since it is over the Portal internal private network. Therefore, the user must use IPv4 addresses to access external resources from the vapp nodes.

Submit any additional questions on the Contact Information page.