Research Computing Environment (RCE)

For intensive social science computing

Latest News

New requirement: must use Harvard VPN to access the RCE

April 18, 2019

We're changing the way RCE users connect to the RCE. Following the changeover in late May, you'll need to connect to Harvard's VPN in order to use the RCE, whether you are connecting via NoMachine (NX), or SFTP or SSH. In order to connect to VPN, you'll need to claim your HarvardKey and set up two-factor authentication (the DUO app is recommended, but you can also use SMS or a phone call for authentication).

Stata 15 Advisory UPDATE: xtreg, fe may not be doing what you expect

March 2, 2018

RECOMMENDATION TO RESEARCHERS: DO NOT use the example formula in the Stata manual shown for computing the grand mean with -xtreg, fe- . For a correct formula, see the link below.

Several days ago, one of our IQSS Data Scientists tried to replicate results from -xtreg, fe- by re-implementing the command using the formula shown in Stata 15's manual entry for -xtreg, fe-. It failed:...

Always On: Persistent Interactive Jobs on the RCE

Do you run interactive jobs on the Research Computing Environment (RCE)? You probably do, but, do you know what differentiates interactive jobs from non-interactive or batch RCE jobs?

It’s simple: Interactive jobs expect user-input and are often GUI providing applications like XStata, Matlab, or Mathematica. Batch jobs expect no user input and run in parallel without intervention.

How RCE powered applications work now

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Unable to connect?

Things to check if you are unable to connect to the RCE:

Is there an active outage? All outages are posted to the outage notifier (the widget in the top right of your RCE session), the RCE upcoming events, and to our outages mailing list in advance of planned maintenance windows. You can also check the HMDC status page. For more information, visit our RCE outages page.
Are you over quota? If your home directory goes over 2GB, you won't be able to log in to a RCE desktop. Log in via SSH to clean up your home directory. See, How Do I Check My Quota? for more information.
Has your password or account expired? Try logging in to our self service page at https://accounts.hmdc.harvard.edu.

For detailed information, please see our FAQ page.