Harvard-MIT Data Center

You can access HMDC-managed systems from you desktop workstation, from workstations in the public labs, or from workstations outside the Harvard network, by means of our robust and secure remote access service.

One advantage of our remote access service is that user sessions can be suspended and resumed at will; this means that you can begin a session from an office workstation, suspend it, move to a lab workstation and resume the previous session, suspend it again, and then move to a home computer and resume the same session, all with no disruption of your environment. During this time the location and contents of windows remains consistent, processes and applications run without interruption, and any interface customizations remain in effect.

Our remote access service provides a familiar, consistent user experience to all HMDC affiliates. Since the RCE is built on open standards and does not require specialized or proprietary software, you can access the full Research Computing Environment from any modern workstation with a graphical user interface and a high-speed internet connection.

Remote access provides three categories of services:

• Research Environment (graphical desktop)
• Secure Shell (command-line tools)
• File Access (home directory)

The RCE offers tools for development of new R packages or other software development projects.

Guide Overview

This guide introduces you to the statistical applications that are available in the RCE. For each of the following applications, this guide describes how to launch and exit from the menus and from the command prompt, how to access help, and how to install new components:

• R
• GAUSS
• Mathematica
• MATLAB
• Octave
• SAS
• S-PLUS
• Stata and State/SE
• RCE Powered applications

The section Implementation Details provides general information about the implementation of statistical applications in the RCE, including where to find out more about these tools.

Note: This guide defines directory and path names that refer to the current version of applications installed in the RCE at the time of publishing. When applications are updated or modified, these names might change to reflect different version numbers.

The relaunched RCE provides new functionality. For further details, see Accessing the RCE and RCE FAQ.

Note: To gain initial access to the relaunched RCE you must run the update script. See for detailed information.

We strive to make the RCE as useful to all users as possible. 

If you cannot find an application you need or require additional tools or resources, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you however we can.

Our batch servers, or batch cluster, comprises roughtly 200 CPU cores, each with 2 gigabytes of RAM allocated per core.

Use our batch servers to process longer running jobs that have parallel components.

The RCE consists of multiple layers of servers:

• Login servers - For all desktop services, including launching jobs on the batch and interactive servers
• Batch servers - For large-scale parallel processing
• Interactive servers - For memory-intensive nonparallel processing

RCE Powered Applications use the interactive servers to run your memory-intensive research jobs, to isolate the login servers from the load these processes incur.

For information about how to use these resrouces, see Working with RCE Powered Statistical Applications.

Refer to these Frequently Asked Questions about our cluster computing services as a first step to solving potential problems.

If you continue to experience difficulty, please contact us.

HMDC offers walk-in office hours during the week at three locations:

• CGIS South building
• Harvard Law School Library
• MIT Dewey Library

No appointment is necessary for any of the walk-in office hours, but service is first come, first served. Walk-in office visits are perfect for quick questions, first contact with our statistcal consultants, or time sensitive matters.

For making a regular appointment for statistical consulting, please contact us.

MIT users should contact us using this email form.

We offer workshops on statistical software and data analysis for the Harvard and MIT communities, as described on the IQSS web site Training page. We have also collected various internal and external documentation and links on data and statistics.

Our consultants work to help users access and analyze their data. Consultation may include, but is not limited to: designing quantitative research, finding data for research, getting started with statistical software programs, introduction to basic statistical analyses, setting up advanced statistical analyses in particular packages, choosing statistical software, or general statistical advice.

Consultation may be obtained by phone, e-mail, scheduled appointments, and walk-in office hours.

For further assistance, please contact us.

MIT users should contact the consultant using this email form.

We distribute several software packages that are made available by agreement with the software makers. These software packages are not free, but generally at a greatly reduced cost for Harvard community members. Please see the individual software packages to see details and cost information.

MIT community members are not eligible for any of the specific distribution plans at this time.

For more information, please contact us.

Read these frequently asked questions when you start working with statistical data files, or when you have trouble working with specific tools.