Practice 8 - Starting with cloud

References

Referred documents and web sites contain supportive information for the practice:

• euca2tools User guide can be found in: Eucalyptus user guide
• OpenStack wiki

Introduction

SciCloud is a Cloud infrastructure running on the hardware of the University of Tartu. It is divided into separate smaller clouds, built using either Eucalyptus or OpenStack platforms. They are both open source cloud platforms compatible on the API level with Amazon EC2 public cloud.

Usually when working with cloud infrastructure you follow similar work flow:

1. Register to use the cloud
2. Select appropriate virtual machine image to run
3. Start an instance of the virtual machine image. Login as root to the instance and set it up to meet your requirements. I.e. install needed software, upload your own program, do any other configuration as you would do with the real machine.
4. As you will lose all your work as instance will be terminated you have three options on how to persist your changes:
   1. Save all your configuration steps to a script that will launch and configure the instance automatically for you.
   2. Bundle a new image from your running instance and next time launch your custom image.
   3. Save the running instance as a snapshot, and next time launch new instances from there.

First option is more flexible as you can easily change the script than bundle a new image if something changes. Second and third option are simpler to use once you have stable configuration or when launching large number of instances.

In this lab we are working on the newest OpenStack cloud platform.

Exercise 8.1. Requesting cloud user account

1. Go to the lab supervisor and fill a user registration form.
2. Log into https://stratus.at.mt.ut.ee/horizon
   • You have to be in the university network to access this website. Use VPN or log into eduroam if you're using your own laptop
3. Download User certificates for EC2 API.
   • Settings-> Ec2 Credentials -> Download
   • Save these credentials to .scicloud folder in your home directory and remember where it is.
   • If you're using a laptop: Move .scicloud folder to our university home directory. (use scp command on Linux, or an FTP program from windows)

Exercise 8.2. Using euca2ools command line tool to access the cloud

1. Log into atigrid.mt.ut.ee server using ssh.
   • ssh username@atigrid.mt.ut.ee
   • Use your university credentials
2. Verify that you are running bash
   • $ echo $SHELL
   • If it's not bash, then run it:
   • bash
3. Import environment variables needed for euca2tools
   • source .scicloud/ec2rc.sh
4. List available virtual machine images to make sure everything is working:
   • bash-3.2$ euca-describe-images
5. Try out some other euca-* commands

Exercise 8.3. Configuring Firefox plug-in for cloud access

1. Start Firefox browser
2. Download Hybridfox plug-in version 1.6.000196 from: https://hybridfox.googlecode.com/files/hybridfox-1.6.000196.xpi
3. Start the plug-in under Tools->Hybridfox
4. Configure Regions
   • Region name: SciCloud
   • Type: Openstack
   • Endpoint Url: url of the OpenStack services
     • Open ec2rc.sh file in the .scicloud folder. The url you need is the value of EC2_URL
5. Configure Credentials
   • Account name: your Username
   • AWS Access Key: EC2_ACCESS_KEY value in the ec2rc.sh file
   • AWS secret Key: EC2_SECRET_KEY value in the ec2rc.sh file
   • Preferred Region: SciCloud
6. Open KeyPairs Tab
   • Create new Key
     • Choose a name for this key, should include your last name
     • Download the key file to the .scicloud folder (Under your university home folder)
     • Do not lose this key, You will need this key to access (ssh) the instances you create using Hybridfox.
7. Look under Images tab to see a replicate view of the euca2ools command euca-describe-images

Exercise 8.4. Reading more about cloud (-- 2 points)

Study the following paper and write an excerpt (~1 page) M. Armbrust et al., “Above the Clouds, A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing”, Technical Report, University of California, Feb, 2009. Available at http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.pdf

Write why and where you think cloud could be useful for you?

Deliverables:

• Account created in cloud
• Upload the excerpt of the 4th exercise