Connecting to a Research Data Storage Service (RDSS) share

Quest and Kellogg Linux Cluster Downtime, December 14 - 18.

Quest, including the Quest Analytics Nodes, the Genomics Compute Cluster (GCC), the Kellogg Linux Cluster (KLC), and Quest OnDemand, will be unavailable for scheduled maintenance starting at 8 A.M. on Saturday, December 14, and ending approximately at 5 P.M. on Wednesday, December 18. During the maintenance window, you will not be able to login to Quest, Quest Analytics Nodes, the GCC, KLC, or Quest OnDemand submit new jobs, run jobs, or access files stored on Quest in any way including Globus. For details on this maintenance, please see the Status of University IT Services page.

Quest RHEL8 Pilot Environment - November 18.

Starting November 18, all Quest users are invited to test and run their workflows in a RHEL8 pilot environment to prepare for Quest moving completely to RHEL8 in March 2025. We invite researchers to provide us with feedback during the pilot by contacting the Research Computing and Data Services team at quest-help@northwestern.edu. The pilot environment will consist of 24 H100 GPU nodes and seventy-two CPU nodes, and it will expand with additional nodes through March 2025. Details on how to access this pilot environment will be published in a KB article on November 18.

This article describes how to connect to Research Data Storage Service (RDSS) including FSMresfiles on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

Connect to the right network

RDSS/FSMResfiles only allows connections from Northwestern University IP addresses. To get your computer's IP address assigned by Northwestern, sign in to a Northwestern network: 

  • On campus: Plug in to an Ethernet port or use the Eduroam network.
  • Off campus: GlobalProtect VPN

Note, if you are trying to connect to FSMResfiles, connecting to Eduroam won't work. You need to use Ethernet or VPN. 

If you're connected to one of these networks and cannot access your share, email rdss-help@northwestern.edu and we can help troubleshoot.

RDSS uses the CIFS protocol, so your device must allow access on TCP port 445.

Identify your server

  • Feinberg: If you are a member of Feinberg School of Medicine, the address is fsmresfiles.northwestern.edu
  • Audited: If you are not in Feinberg, but have selected auditing capability, the address is resfilesaudit.northwestern.edu
  • Non-audited: If you are not in Feinberg and have no auditing, the address is resfiles.northwestern.edu

Connect to your share​​

The following instructions describe how to connect to your data storage share. The connection will reset if your computer goes offline or restarts. 

MacOSX

Windows

Linux

Mount share as a network drive

Follow these operating systems specific instructions to create a permanent mount to your machine. 

MacOSX

Windows

Linux

 

Need help?

If these instructions don't work for you, please see our RDSS Troubleshooting Guide

For help connecting to RDSS email rdss-help@northwestern.edu

Researchers from the Feinberg School of Medicine or FSMresfiles users requesting access or having issues with their shares, Please email their local IT support staff at fsmhelp@northwestern.edu.

Also see our Research Data Management Guide for links to all of our help articles.

Research Data Management Support at Northwestern University

Research computing data services partners with the Office for Research, University Libraries and Galter Health Sciences Library to provide research data management support throughout the research process. Please see the Research Data Management and Sharing page for more information

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RDSS provides secure on-premise data storage for researchers.