2.4 Creating Your First Resource

Creating Your First Resource

Loome lets you create workstations, HPC clusters, and storage through a simplified template-based interface. This walkthrough covers the full process.

Resource Types at a Glance

Resource Description Best For
Workstations Virtual machines with desktop environments Interactive analysis, development, visualization
HPC Clusters Scalable compute clusters Large-scale simulations, batch processing
Storage Azure storage accounts Data storage, file sharing

Creating a Workstation

Step 1: Browse Templates

  1. Log in to the Loome portal
  2. Click Templates in the main menu
  3. Select Workstations category

Step 2: Choose a Template

  1. Review the available configurations and estimated hourly costs
  2. Click Select on your chosen template
Template Type Description Best For
Standard General-purpose VMs Development, light analysis
GPU-enabled VMs with GPU acceleration Machine learning, visualization
High Memory VMs with large RAM Data-intensive analysis

Step 3: Configure

Field Description Example
Name Unique name for your workstation my-analysis-vm
Size VM size (CPU, RAM) Standard_D4s_v3
Operating System OS image Ubuntu 22.04, Windows Server
Storage Disk size 128 GB
Region Azure region Australia East
Tip

Choose the smallest VM size that meets your needs. You can resize later if you need more resources.

Step 4: Review and Create

  1. Review your configuration and estimated costs
  2. Verify you have sufficient budget
  3. Click Create to provision the workstation
  4. Wait for status to change from “Creating” to “Running” (a few minutes)

Creating an HPC Cluster

Step 1: Select Template

  1. Navigate to Templates > Clusters
  2. Choose a cluster template (Standard CPU or GPU)
  3. Click Select

Step 2: Configure

Field Description Example
Name Cluster name my-hpc-cluster
Head Node Size Size of the head/login node Standard_D4s_v3
Compute Node Size Size of compute nodes Standard_HB120rs_v3
Min Nodes Minimum compute nodes 0
Max Nodes Maximum compute nodes 10
Scheduler Job scheduler Slurm, PBS
Info

Setting Min Nodes to 0 allows the cluster to scale down when idle, saving costs. Nodes spin up automatically when jobs are submitted.

Step 3: Attach Storage

  1. Select existing storage or create new
  2. Configure mount points
  3. Set permissions

Step 4: Create

  1. Review configuration and costs
  2. Click Create
  3. Wait for provisioning (may take 10-15 minutes)

Creating Storage

  1. Go to Templates > Storage
  2. Select storage type (Blob or File)
  3. Configure:
Field Description Example
Name Storage account name myprojectstorage
Type Storage type Blob, File
Redundancy Data redundancy level LRS, GRS
Size Initial size allocation 1 TB
  1. Click Create — storage will be available within minutes

Naming Conventions

Resource Convention Example
Workstations {project}-{purpose}-vm genomics-analysis-vm
Clusters {project}-{type}-cluster physics-hpc-cluster
Storage {project}storage genomicsstorage
Warning

Resource names must be unique and follow Azure naming rules: lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only. No spaces or special characters.

Your resource is running — time to connect: Connecting to Your Resource