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VPN

Overview

A virtual private network (VPN) is a mechanism for creating a secure connection between a computer and a computing network using an insecure communication medium like the Internet. You can access the resources available within the network from your computer using a VPN.

You will find the following VPN services useful for accessing some of the resources offered by the Research and Discovery Technologies:

  • UArizona SSL VPN (vpn.arizona.edu): If you are not connected to the UArizona campus network you will need to connect to this VPN to access R-DAS.
  • UArizona HPC VPN (vpn.hpc.arizona.edu): You will need to connect to this VPN to use graphical applications that need X11 forwarding with the HPC clusters.

Instructions for Connecting

You can connect to the UArizona VPN services with the software Cisco Secure Client. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux distributions. On Linux distributions you might have a better experience with OpenConnect VPN (see CLI). Follow the UITS Knowledge Base guide for Windows, Mac, or Linux, to install Cisco Secure Client on your computer. The guide also shows how you can connect to the UArizona SSL VPN.

Follow the steps below to connect to UArizona HPC VPN (the screenshots are from a Mac, but the experience is similar across OSs):

  1. Open Cisco Secure Client
  2. Enter vpn.hpc.arizona.edu in the address bar and click Connect.
  3. In the window that launches, enter your UArizona NetID as your Username and click OK.
  4. In the next window, enter your UArizona NetID password and click OK.
  5. In the window that launches, enter the NetID+ method you selected when you enrolled.
  6. Lastly, review the notice box and click Accept.

Use of sudo

Do not run any sudo commands on the HPC clusters when following the instructions below. These are strictly meant for your personal machines.

You can connect to UArizona VPN services from the command line with OpenConnect VPN. To do this, you will need sudo privileges.

OpenConnect VPN is available for Windows, Mac and Linux distributions, however installation on Windows can be difficult. On Windows, you might have a better experience with Cisco Secure Client (see GUI). You can find more information on platforms supported by OpenConnect from the project website. Select your operating system from the list below to view installation instructions:

Install with the Homebrew package manager: brew install openconnect

Follow the instructions from Open Build Service for your distribution.

Once you have OpenConnect installed, you can connect to UArizona VPNs using the following:

  1. Open your terminal
  2. Enter sudo openconnect vpn.arizona.edu
  3. A prompt will appear asking you to choose a VPN GROUP. Enter 1.
  4. A prompt will appear asking you for your Username. Enter your UArizona NetID.
  5. A prompt will appear asking for your Password. Enter your UArizona NetID password.
  6. A second prompt will appear asking for your Password. Enter the NetID+ method you selected when you enrolled.
    1. If you selected the Push method, then enter push.
    2. If you selected the SMS method, enter sms. If you do this, it will show that the login has failed and will ask you to reenter your Username, Password, and NetID+ method. For Username and Password do the same as before. For NetID+ method, enter the SMS passcode you received.
    3. If you selected the Passcode method, then enter your passcode.
  1. Open your terminal
  2. Enter sudo openconnect vpn.hpc.arizona.edu
  3. A prompt will appear asking you for your Username. Enter your UArizona NetID.
  4. A prompt will appear asking for your Password. Enter your UArizona NetID password.
  5. A second prompt will appear asking for your Password. Enter the NetID+ method you selected when you enrolled.
    1. If you selected the Push method, then enter push.
    2. If you selected the SMS method, enter sms. If you do this, the prompt will appear again. Enter the SMS passcode that you received.
    3. If you selected the Passcode method, then enter your passcode.