EnSight is a distributed application with a client that manages the user interface and graphics, and a server that reads data and performs compute-intensive calculations. The client and server each run as separate processes on one or more computers. Before EnSight can do anything useful, the client process must be connected to the server process.

For a simple operation on the same machine (standalone), the client and server processes will be started and connected for you. If you desire more control over the standalone operation or want to take advantage of a distributed operation, you have the options described below.