Skip to content

RAPID Virtual Machines

RAPID Virtual Machines (VMs) are pre-configured, computational resources provided to Duke faculty at no-cost to jump start research projects. RAPID VMs take advantage of virtualization technology and are offered as an alternative to researcher-purchased and locally managed physical servers. These simple-to-set-up and easy-to-replace VMs are physically located on the Duke University network and have access to University resources, just like your Duke laptop or computer.

Benefits and features:

  • UNIX or Windows RAPID VMs can be preloaded with research focused computational software such as Jupyter Notebook or RStudio
  • Faculty, or their designees, can create projects and add and manage RAPID VMs in near real time
  • Project owners have admin, or root, access to their VMs and can add their own software, or install software from a library of more than 100 software packages for free, or at a steep discount, from software.duke.edu
  • RAPID VMS are available on the Duke network and by VPN. If you choose to install a Web Server, they can be accessed externally
  • For larger computational needs, faculty can combine up to 3 allocations with collaborators

Restrictions

  • As provisioned, RAPID VMs are suitable for public and restricted data (see the Duke Data Classification standard). If automatic patching or malware protection is disabled, owners take full responsibility for ensuring the VM meets the Minimum Security Standard for Servers for their data classification
  • RAPID VMs cannot be maintained if a faculty member leaves Duke
  • While owners may restore their VM from a daily snapshot through Research Toolkits, backups are not provided. A self-service git repository is available for Duke students, faculty, and staff use at gitlab.oit.duke.edu to assist with version control and backups of source code
  • RAPID VMs are subject to Duke's End Point Management policies and come installed with required software to manage and report on the systems. If end point management, automatic patching or malware protection is disabled, owners take full responsibility for ensuring the VM meets the Minimum Security Standard for Servers for their data classification. Additionally, if the machine falls out of minimum end point standards, they will be quarantined.

More About the RAPID Program

The RAPID (Research Accelerating, Preconfigured, Individual, Dynamic machines) program was launched in 2015 as a way to support researchers with easily accessible and reusable computational resources that are centrally supported. The goals of the program:

  • Reduce the burden on researchers on procuring, building and supporting computational resources for projects, initial research development, collaborations, or student work
  • Shift computational technologies to greener solutions that support virtualization, sharing, and easy re-use
  • Improve availability of research computational systems by automating common system administration tasks at scale
  • Improve security by building services to meet current and evolving system security standards