DoC Private IaaS Cloud

Thomas JosephCloud Managerhttp://wp.doc.ic.ac.uk/tjoseph

Topics

• Cloud Infrastructure Setup – H/W & S/W• Usage stats • Case Studies• Demo• Access info• User Functionalities• Best Practices• Future

Infrastructure

• Built using Apache Cloudstack v4.1.1 and Xenserver (hypervisor)

• Running on most of the Cloud purchased h/w, more to be added soon. More can be purchased and added later.

• Enables any DoC user to create any number of VMs, any mixture of long/short lived VMs.

Infrastructure contd.

• Publicly accessible via internet – subject to College firewall restrictions

• 1024 public IP addresses for VMs - more can be added later.

• Running a variety of Linux distributions (eg. CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu).

Who is using the Cloud today?

• Student Group Projects (MSc & Third year)• Individual Students• PhD students, RAs & Academics • CSG Testing & Development• Approx 240 users & 200 VMs

Activity

User Operations

Server Usage stats

Case Study- Christian Priebe, LSDS

We have used the DoC CloudStack deployment to mainly deploy multiple PaaS systems, namely OpenShift and AppScale with CloudFoundry.

I probably created around a hundred VMs or so, because of some low-level modifications to the system I made as part of several experiments. That's one of the biggest advantages to me. If something went wrong, just start a new VM or reset the old one and start again. This is works especially well in combination with usingtemplates.

Case Study – Anandha Gopalan, TF

3rd Yr Group Projects● 22 groups in total● Each group was assigned a VM on the Cloud– Given 'root' access, which allowed them to install any tools/packages that they wished to use for their project– Large disk space– No need for maintenance from CSG– Flexibility for the groups● On asking around, students were generally positive● Quite a few groups used the VM to show their final

demonstration

Case Study – Anandha Gopalan, TF

UG Individual Projects● Students given VM if they ask for it– No need for CSG to maintain project

machines (except when specialized H/W is needed)– Flexibility for student to install any

tools/packages they see fit

Case Study – Petr Hosek, SRG

Accessing it

Start here - Documentationhttp://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/csg/services/cloud

Web UIhttps://146.169.20.40:8443/client/

Let’s give it a try!!

Demo

• Demo for Cloud Login, VM Creation, Snapshot Volume, Create Template, http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~tjoseph1/vmdeployment-snapshot-template.mp4

Inside the DoC Cloud

Access info

• All DoC users have access via College username & password setting domain to “imperial”.

• In case of issues contact help@doc.ic.ac.uk

• External users cannot use their College login credentials.

Access info contd.

• VMs can be accessed as any other Lab Machines in DoC (e.g. ssh via shell servers).

• CSG controlled VMs are provided with a root shell on tty1/console. If super user access is required then please email help@doc.ic.ac.uk

User related functionalities

Current abilities on CS 4.1.1• Create VM's with existing Templates

• Upload ISO's create VMs -> customize -> Snapshots -> Templates -> Create further VMs

User related functionalities contd.

• Private & Public Templates.

• Add additional Storage as per requirements later on.

• Ability to change available compute offerings.

• APIs for CLI related activities.

Do’s & Dont’s

• VM Deletion: Do delete additional allocated storage.

• Don’t run performance related tests during business hours.

• Don’t add additional 1Tb storage without informing us.

• Do use version control or backup data manually as VMs are not being backed up.

Do’s & Don’ts contd.

• Users should upload their code to Gitlab or to /vol/bitbucket.

• Extra storage can be used by mounting filesystems via NFS.

• DNS entries for custom VMs -> contact CSG• Non DoC users can have access on request ->

College passwords wouldn’t work.

Do’s & Don’ts contd.

• Users can have their VM, template & volume quotas increased on request.

• It’s possible for users want to add personal hardware as hypervisors either as KVM/XenServer.

• Storing project VMs for future use -> Do create a snapshot/template and save a copy.

Future

• Host names (DNS entries) for Non CSG VMs• GPGPU’s within the cloud• More resource accounting• More hardware where needed• Alternate hypervisors e.g. KVM• Support Windows VMs• Upgrade CloudStack -> v4.2.1

• What do you want?