Access Methods

How you access a Carolina Cloud instance depends on the flavor you provisioned.

SSH access

Available for: VMs (base), Containers (base, genomics, datascience)

Every SSH-accessible instance gets a unique port on login.carolinacloud.io:

ssh -p <port> ccloud@login.carolinacloud.io

The port number and password are displayed on your instance card in the dashboard. VMs with a public IPv4 address can also be accessed directly:

ssh ccloud@<public_ip>

Password-less access

Pass your SSH public key at creation time (via the dashboard, API, or CLI) and you can skip the password entirely:

ccloud new vm --cpus 8 --ram 16 --disk 100 --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

IDE integration

Add your instance to ~/.ssh/config for one-command access from Cursor, VSCode, Zed, or any editor with Remote-SSH support:

Host my-instance
    HostName login.carolinacloud.io
    User ccloud
    Port 30120

Then connect with ssh my-instance or use your IDE’s remote connection dialog.

Web browser access

Available for: Marimo, Data Science Notebook, RStudio Server

Web-accessible instances are served at https://<instance-name>.carolinacloud.io. Click the Open button on your instance card or navigate directly to the URL.

Carolina Cloud login required

All web app instances are protected behind Carolina Cloud authentication. When you open an instance URL, you must be logged in to your Carolina Cloud account in the same browser. If you’re not logged in, you’ll be redirected to the login page first.

This means your RStudio Server and Marimo notebooks are never exposed to the open internet — even if someone discovers your instance URL, they cannot access it without being authenticated as the instance owner. There are no passwords to leak, no tokens to expire in a bookmark, and no risk of accidentally sharing an open link.

In addition to the Carolina Cloud login, some flavors have their own application-level authentication:

Flavor	Application-level login
Marimo / Data Science Notebook	None needed — Carolina Cloud login is sufficient
RStudio Server	Username ccloud + password from instance card

CLI quick access

The ccloud ssh command connects you to any SSH-accessible instance by name or UUID:

ccloud ssh my-instance

If sshpass is installed, it handles the password automatically. Otherwise, it displays the password for you to paste.