This demonstration assumes that you have already accessed the Web server that is running the NITRC-CE instance you launched through Amazon Web Services, either using the AWS Marketplace or a public Amazon Machine Image.

If you do not have a NITRC-CE instance running and need help doing this, please watch the videos on Launching a NITRC-CE Instance.

In your browser, you should see a screen like this.

You will now need a username and password to access NITRC-CE.

You are welcome to use your NITRC username and password, but remember that this is a separate computer system, and these credentials are not linked to your NITRC account, so changing your password on one of the systems will not affect the password on the other.

Enter your chosen username and then enter the password twice.

If you are willing to allow the NITRC team to gather some anonymous statistical information based on your NITRC-CE usage, please leave these two check boxes checked.

If you want a reminder to turn off your instance so you don't accrue charges when you are not running any computations, enter an e-mail address at which the reminder should be sent.

By default the reminder will be sent after the instance has been running for 6 hours, but you can change this to any number of hours or fraction of an hour that works for you.

When you are ready, click the "submit" button.

NITRC-CE is configured with a VNC (Virtual Network Computing) interface.

Click the "Control Panel" button to start a VNC session and display the session control panel.

Let's start by reviewing the Software License Status list.

Click the "Licenses" tab on the Control Panel.

Some licenses are pre-installed and some must be installed manually by each user.

The FreeSurfer license, for example, needs to be manually installed, so you would click here to begin that process.

You should click the "FreeSurfer License Registration Page" link, and follow the instructions to attain your license.

Paste it in this field and click the "Submit Query" button.

Once you submit the license, the Software License Status list would show that the FreeSurfer license is installed.

Now, let's launch our VNC viewer so we can use these software packages.

Click the "Console" tab.

Click the "Connect" button to start a client on your local computer that connects to your virtual computer.

If you get a security prompt, click "Run" to allow the client to run on your computer.

Enter your password in the prompt window.

This is the NITRC-CE password you created at the beginning of this demonstration.

You should see a new window system running your virtual computer in a VNC viewer like this.

You are now ready to run applications using NITRC-CE!

Watch the video on Using NITRC-CE for more information.