Accessing the RCE

This guide assumes you already have an RCE account. If you do not, please contact us at help@iq.harvard.edu to request one. RCE accounts are available to researchers at Harvard and MIT; see http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/user-services/research-computing-environment-sla for details.

You can access the RCE login nodes from any modern workstation or laptop with a high-speed connection.  Please note, you'll need to connect to Harvard's VPN in order to use the RCE, whether you are connecting via NoMachine (NX), or SFTP (eg FileZilla) or SSH.   In order to connect to VPN, you'll need to claim your HarvardKey and set up two-factor authentication. 

The RCE provides a familiar, consistent user experience to all researchers; our desktop environment is built on NoMachine's NXCentOS Linux and Gnome. This allows sessions to be suspended and resumed at will: you can begin a session from one workstation, suspend it, move to another system, and resume the previous session, all with no disruption to your environment. If you work in a command line environment, and want the highest throughput without a graphical interface, the RCE is also accessible via SSH connection.

Remote access provides three categories of services:

  • Research Environment (graphical desktop)
  • Secure Shell (command-line tools)
  • File Access (home directory and non-confidential project space)

This guide assumes you already have an RCE account. If you do not, please contact us at help@iq.harvard.edu to request one.

Graphical Desktop (NX)

To connect to the RCE remote desktop, please follow the instructions on our NX4 documentation page.

Command-line (SSH)

To connect to the RCE using command-line, simply ssh to rce.hmdc.harvard.edu using a terminal in OSX and Linux, or using a utility such as PuTTY.

File Transfer (FileZilla)

To transfer files to or from the RCE, please follow the instructions on our FileZilla documentation page.