Running a R GUI,and parallel programming on Amazon EC2

Ok here is an update to the post on running R on an Amazon EC2.

https://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/running-r-on-amazon-ec2/

1) Login to Amazon Console using instructions in earlier post

2) Select AMI-Platform Ubuntu-i-5575773f

Basically select the latest 64 bit instance from Ubuntu

3) Proceed as in post before to launch AMI and instance- here I chose large with 4cores

3.1) Before connecting to your session

search Synaptic Package Manager for x11-

I installed the X11 VNC server package –

and now interactive sessions will work (read GUIs)

3.2) Modify the line

ssh -i decisionstats2.pem root@ec2-75-101-182-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com

To

ssh -i decisionstats2.pem -X ubuntu@ec2-75-101-182-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com

This will connect you.

4) INSTALL R – Cran R is a standard Ubuntu Package

using

sudo apt-get install r-base

then type R

and install.packages(“Rcmdr”)

Note – you should be able to see the grey colored Tcl/Tpk script showing cran locations

in a seperate window if X11 is working

5) doSNOW package works on the Ubuntu 64- The results are below for

check <-function(n) {check <-function(n) {

+ for(i in 1:1000)

+ {

+ sme <- matrix(rnorm(100), 10,10)

+ solve(sme)

+ }

+ }

>

>  times <- 100

The time of 7.3 is almost 5.5 times faster than running it locally on a dual core, and still 3 times faster than running foreach locally. Note I used 4 cores this time in snow.

5) The Tcl/Tk interface of R Cmdr takes a long time to load on EC2 than locally. It may be due to the fact I was running Ubuntu using a VM Player (http://www.vmware.com/go/downloadplayer/ ). However there seems to be a general slowing down when viewing graphics.

or simply

sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcmdr 

 

Author: Ajay Ohri

http://about.me/ajayohri View all posts by Ajay Ohri