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GUI Dashboard

Launch the GUI with no arguments:

ops-hpc

Layout

The dashboard has three main areas:

Status Bar (top)

Shows at a glance: image state, running VMs, bucket contents, cost estimate. Updates every 30 seconds.

Center (split view)

Left panel:

  • Job Queue — add/remove/reorder analyses, set per-job timeouts
  • Settings — zone, machine type, spot/standard toggle, results directory
  • Load/Save Jobs — export queue to a jobs file, or load one

Right panel (tabbed):

  • OpenSees Output — live scrollable log from the remote analysis
  • VM Metrics — CPU, RAM, disk, network, uptime, OpenSees process count

Bottom

Panic buttons:

Button Action VM after?
+30m / +60m / +120m Extend current analysis deadline Running
ABORT ANALYSIS Kill OpenSees processes Still alive
EMERGENCY DOWNLOAD Upload partial results to GCS Still alive
STOP VM NOW Delete VM immediately Gone

Action buttons:

  • Download Results — always available, even during analysis
  • Build Image — build or rebuild the OpenSees image
  • Refresh Status — update the status bar
  • Setup — run first-time setup checks
  • Cleanup — emergency wipe bucket + kill VMs

Typical workflow

  1. Click + Add to add analysis directories to the queue
  2. Set timeouts for each job
  3. Select Spot or Standard in settings
  4. Click SEND ALL
  5. Watch live output in the OpenSees Output tab
  6. VM Metrics tab shows real-time resource usage
  7. If analysis takes longer than expected, click +30m / +60m / +120m
  8. Results auto-download to your PC every 5 minutes
  9. When done, VM is deleted automatically

Startup check

On launch, the GUI cross-references session_state.json with actual GCP state:

  • Warns about orphan VMs from previous sessions
  • Resets interrupted downloads for auto-retry
  • Enables panic buttons if VMs are found running

Deadline display

During analysis, the panic buttons area shows:

Deadline: 87m remaining (of 120m)    [+30m] [+60m] [+120m]
  • Green: > 30 minutes remaining
  • Orange: < 30 minutes
  • Red: < 10 minutes

Each job in a batch gets its own deadline. The timer resets when the next job starts.