To setup remote desktop access on any Cent OS machine you can install VNC + Gnome environment using these simple steps:

First login to your VPS/Server using your SSH client (such as putty) then run these commands:

yum install vnc-server
yum install vnc
yum groupinstall “GNOME Desktop Environment”
yum install nano

Now we have to modify the VNC settings:

nano /etc/sysconfig/vncservers

add this to the beginning of the file:

VNCSERVERS=”2:root”
VNCSERVERARGS[1]=”-geometry 640×480″

Now we have to run the VNC server for the first time:

vncserver

VNC server is running, but we have run it through Gnome desktop which is our working environment:

nano /root/.vnc/xstartup

Now you have to remove “#” from starting lines ‘#unset SESSION_MANAGER’ and ‘#exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc` and change the last line (‘#exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc`) to “exec gnome-session &”.

Now stop and start the VNC server again:

vncserver -kill :1
vncserver

Its ready! You can connect to <ip>:1 using VNC viewer.

Note: You can install your needed applications too. For example you can run this command to install Firefox on your VNC remote desktop:

yum install firefox