47.4. Setting Up Your Environment (System Administrators)

This section is designed to help system administrators deploy the Fluent Job Service in on-premise environments.

About the Fluent Job Service

The Fluent job service is a RESTful service developed as a companion to the Fluent web server feature. It makes it easier to access Ansys Fluent's web interface for remote HPC jobs. When a Fluent job starts on an HPC cluster, it registers connection information (such as the server URL and a token) with the job service. The customer can access the server URL from the job service web page by providing the (secret) job token (s)he specifies when submitting the job. It also allows the user to collaborate with other co-workers by sharing the token.

The job service is implemented as a HTTP service using Node.js/Express.js and is built as Winx64 and Linux executables. A single instance of the job service should be enough for moderate workloads (a few hundred concurrent users) but if needed, multiple instances can be run in parallel.

Important:  For security reasons, you should not share your token or network path with anyone.

Licensing

The job service is available for free.

Packaging

The job service executable is located in the Fluent installation directory at:

  • Windows 64:

    v242\fluent\jobservice\winx64\jobservice.exe

  • Linux 64:

    v242/fluent/jobservice/linx64/jobservice

Hardware Requirements

The service can be run on a single CPU, 4GB RAM VM (Winx64 or Linux).

Deployment

The following steps describe the actions needed to deploy the service:

  1. Identify the machine to run the service.

  2. Put the executable somewhere on the machine (there is no installation step).

  3. Copy config.js to v242/fluent/fluent.24.2.0/web/ui.

  4. Run the executable. If you are running the job service in any directory other than its parent directory, then you need to provide the absolute path to v242/fluent/fluent.24.2.0/web/ui as the command line option -u (see below).

    The following usage instructions apply to the job service:

    Usage: jobservice.exe [options]
Options:
  -s, --storage       Storage type     [choices: "file", "db"] [default: "file"]
  -p, --port          Port number                                [default: 4000]
  -d, --dbpath        Path to database json file
  -c, --protocol      Protocol      [choices: "http", "https"] [default: "http"]
  -u, --uipath        Path to ui directory containing index.html and other UI
                      files               [default: "../../fluent24.2.0/web/ui"]
      --helppath      Path to help directory
                                          [default: "../../../commonfiles/help"]
  -l, --certlocation  Path to directory containing ssl certificate (named
                      jobservice.crt) and key (named jobservice.key).
                       [default: "Script directory [C:\snapshot\s\job-service]"]
  -h, --help          Show help                                        [boolean]

  5. On Linux, it is possible to run the service using system to ensure that the service starts automatically and keeps running in event of a problem.

 

47.4.1. Supporting HTTPS

For HTTPS support, the Fluent web server requires the certificate files to be provided in one of the following two ways.

  1. A custom certificate directory.

    The environment variable FLUENT_WEBSERVER_CERTIFICATE_ROOT should be set to the directory path that contains the certificate files.

    At this location, Fluent will look for the following files.

    1. webserver.crt (the SSL certificate file)

    2. webserver.key (the corresponding private key file)

    3. dh.pem (the DH parameter file)

    Note:  The web server will not start if this environment variable is set, but the above files are absent.

  2. A default directory.

    If the environment variable FLUENT_WEBSERVER_CERTIFICATE_ROOT is not set, the web server checks the /web/certificate/ directory in the Fluent installation directory defined by the FLUENT_PROD_DIR environment variable.

    For example, C:\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\v242\fluent\fluent24.2\web\certificate

    If the certificate files are not present, then the web server is started in normal HTTP mode.