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First Steps for Externals

On this page you will learn how external users can obtain access to the RWTH HPC clusters and connect to the systems for the first time.

0. Requirements

External users must be a member of a computing time project before they can access RWTH HPC resources.

There are two ways to become a project member:

Apply for a computing time project via JARDS (see this guide for more information).
Receive an invitation to an existing computing time project (see info below)

Access to HPC resources is granted only after the project has been approved and the user has been added to the project.

1. Invitation of Project Members

Once a computing time project has been approved, project members can be invited. Invited users can then register an HPC account and access the cluster.

Case 1: You are the Person of Contact of a newly approved project

As the Person of Contact (PC), you can invite project members through the RWTH RegApp by following this this guide.

After accepting the invitation, invited users can continue with step 2 of this manual: Register an HPC Account.

Note: If you also want to actively use the cluster yourself, you must invite yourself to the project in the same way as other project members. After accepting your own invitation, continue with step 2 of this manual: Register an HPC account.

Case 2: You want to join an existing project or have already been invited

Contact the Person of Contact (PC) of the project and request an invitation. You will receive an invitation email once you have been added.

Follow the instructions provided in the invitation email. After accepting the invitation, continue with step 2 of this manual: Register an HPC account

2. Register an HPC account

After accepting the invitiation to a computing time project, external users can register an HPC account. The registration is also performed via the RWTH RegApp.

Please follow the instructions in the dedicated HPC account registration manual: Setup the HPC Account with the RWTH RegApp

After successful registration, the HPC account can be used to access CLAIX.

3. Connect to the HPC VPN

Our HPC systems can be accessed directly from the RWTH network, networks connected to the DFN, and selected partner university networks.

If you are connecting from an external network (for example, from home), ensure that you are connected via the HPC VPN.

4. Connect to CLAIX

To connect to CLAIX, make sure that you have your HPC account credentials available, namely:

your HPC account name
your HPC account 2FA token

You can access our cluster via dedicated login nodes. A list of available login nodes is provided in the respective CLAIX documentation (see CLAIX-2023 or CLAIX-2025).

For your first connection, you can use one of the following access methods:

5. Join the Computing Time Project on CLAIX

Adding a user to a computing time project via the RWTH RegApp as described in step 1 does not automatically grant access to the project's resources on the cluster. After inviting users, project owners or managers must also add them to the corresponding Linux group on CLAIX. Information on how to manage project members on the cluster can be found here.

If you have been invited to a project via JARDS but cannot access its resources on CLAIX, please contact the project owner or a project manager to be added to the corresponding group on the cluster.

Next Steps

familiarise yourself with how to work on a cluster using job submission via SLURM. See here for an introduction to SLURM and an introduction for submitting jobs.
familiarise yourself with how computing time projects are used, including how allocated resources are accessed in SLURM jobs and how project storage areas are used for data management.
to maximise your efficiency with working on CLAIX and the Linux operating system, access via the console is recommended. The HPC-Wiki provides some helpful tutorials and resources.

last changed on 07/23/2026

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