As pre-requisite you need to be registered as an ECMWF system user and have a user identifier and password. In addition, authentication is secured by a time-based one-time password (TOTP) which can be generated by a TOTP authenticator app of your choice on a smartphone, laptop or other computing device.
Which facilities and services you can use will depend on your registration. You can connect via the following two methods:
SSH connection
You can open an ssh session on the ECMWF High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF). The authentication is done using Teleport, a software which provides an SSH Jump Host (or Bastion host) service in a secure, modern way. The single sign-on step is performed using an application called "tsh". After that you use standard ssh or scp to connect to systems inside ECMWF. See our Teleport Documentation to learn how to set it up.
Graphical Access using a Virtual Desktop
Alternatively, you may also connect to our Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The Linux Virtual Desktop is your dedicated Red Hat Enterprise Linux system running in ECMWF's data centre and can be used as a graphical desktop to manage compute tasks that run on the HPCF. The web interface of this service can be accessed with a supported browser at https://desktop.ecmwf.int. However, for the best experience, using the native client application for your computer is recommended. See our VDI Service Documentation to get started.