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What is JupyterHub?

JupyterHub is a server-hosted distributed Jupyter notebook environment. JupyterHub allows users to log into a server and write Python code within a web browswer without any software installation on their local computer. Anywhere you have an internet connection, you can bring up a JupyterHub webpage and write/run Python code in a Jupyter notebook. The Jupyter notebook and JupyterLab interfaces that JupyterHub provides is the same Jupyter interface you run locally. Because JupyterHub runs in a web browser, it even works on tablets and phones.

Below is an image of a running JupyterHub server. The JupyterLab interface is shown.

Why JupyterHub?

Why Jupyter Hub? I am teaching an introductory engineering course this winter. In previous quarters, our college has taught MATLAB for three of the labs in this course. But this winter, my section is teaching Python and will cover the same concepts and learning outcomes.

If we use Python in the class this winter, I would like to spend the class time coding and solving problems. I don't want to spend time during class downloading Python, creating virtual environments, troubleshooting installs, dealing with system vs. non-system versions of Python, installing packages, dealing with folder structure, explaining the difference between conda and pip, teaching command-line commands, going over Python on Windows compared to Python on MacOSX... The solution is to use JupyterHub.

Summary

JupyterHub is a way to run Jupyter notebooks on a remote server. Students can log on to a JupyterHub server then write and run Python code without installing any software. Students see the same interface on JupyterHub as they see running Jupyter notebooks locally.

Next Steps

Next, we'll review the tools used on our local computer to deploy JupterHub. These tools include PuTTY and FileZilla. We'll also review the standard locations for JupyterHub configuration and runtime files.