---
aliases:
- /2013/12/run-ipython-notebook-on-HPC-cluster-via-PBS
categories:
- python
- hpc
date: 2013-12-18 16:30
layout: post
slug: run-ipython-notebook-on-HPC-cluster-via-PBS
title: Run IPython Notebook on a HPC Cluster via PBS

---

The [IPython notebook](http://ipython.org/notebook.html) is a great tool for data exploration
and visualization.
It is suitable in particular for analyzing a large amount of data remotely on a computing node
of a HPC cluster and visualize it in a browser that runs on a local machine.
In this configuration, the interface is local, it is very responsive, but the amount of memory
and CPU horsepower is provided by a HPC computing node.

Also, it is possible to keep the notebook server running, disconnect and reconnect later from
another machine to the same session.

I created a script which is very general and can be used on most HPC cluster and published it on Github:

[https://github.com/pyHPC/ipynbhpc](https://github.com/pyHPC/ipynbhpc)

Once the script is running, it is possible to connect to `localhost:PORT` and visualize the 
IPython notebook, see the following screenshot of Chromium running locally on my machine
connected to a IPython notebook running on a Gordon computing node:

<img src="run-ipython-notebook-on-HPC-cluster-via-PBS_screenshot.png" alt="IPython notebook on Gordon" style="width: 730px;"/>