Choosing a Connection Method
Access Virtual Sites from any web browser. You can:
- Run individual software applications in a web browser (recommended).
- Open a full Windows desktop and access applications from the Windows Start menu, allowing you to run multiple applications and share data between them. Select either a graphics processing unit (GPU) version or non-GPU version.
Non-GPU
- Recommended for running most standard applications.
GPU
- Enhanced performance for applications requiring larger computational power such as Adobe InDesign, ArcGIS Pro, etc.
Saving Your Files
- It is recommended that you use Kumo to configure a U-M cloud storage service (Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive) for long-term file storage when using Virtual Sites.
- Virtual Sites does not save files automatically. If your network connection is interrupted while using Virtual Sites, you can recover files saved locally (Desktop or My Documents) after re-establishing your connection. However, locally saved files are temporary and will be deleted within 72 hours.
- If you are simultaneously logged into more than one Virtual Sites session (e.g., GPU session and non-GPU session), files saved to a local drive will not persist across sessions.
Session Limits
- Virtual Sites sessions will time out after 15 minutes of inactivity.
- Your connection may be terminated if your session lasts longer than 12 hours.
- After a Virtual Sites session is terminated, session data is deleted within 15 minutes.
- Because of these limits, long-running analytics jobs are not supported in Virtual Sites. The U-M Research Computing Package may be a better resource for these tasks.
DUO Two-Factor Authentication
Virtual Sites users must use DUO Two Factor Authentication. This can be configured at the Safe Computing DUO page.