Federated Cloud AppDB VMOps Dashboard
The EGI Application Database (AppDB) has recently evolved its functionalities from its currently catalogue of applications and virtual machines (VMs) to include a Graphical User Interface (GUI) allowing authorized users to perform basic VM management operations.
The VMops dashboard
Highlighted features for end-users
- User identification
- Based on the aforementioned identification, provide a personalized list of VMs available for the user based on his VO membership and his role within the VO (ex. vm_operator@fedcloud.egi.eu)
- Create a new topology with one or more instances of a single VM
- Attach additional storage to the VM instances
- Deploy/Un-deploy a topology
- Start/Stop a topology (start/stop all the VMs instances of a topology)
- Start/Stop a single VM instance
- Provide personalized view of topologies and/or VM instances
Highlighted technical features
- TOSCA compatible
- Infrastructure Manager (IM) as the OCCI communication layer
- REST APIs for integration with other services
- Single-Sign-On with the portal and the rest of the AppDB sub-services
- Scalable architecture (one front-end, many back-ends for load balancing)
Accessing the EGI AppDB VMops dashboard
The EGI AppDB VMops dashboard is available at: https://dashboard.appdb.egi.eu/vmops
To access the dashboard, and proceed with the creation of VM topologies, user has to sign-in. As authentication mechanism, the VMops dashboard uses the EGI AAI Checkin service.
As soon as the user's authentication is successfully, the user can start configuring the VM topology using the top-left menu available in the EGI AppDB VMops dashboard front page.
Create (and deploy) a new VM Topology
To create (and deploy) a new VM topology, just click on the New Topology button and configure the settings using the Topology Builder interface as shown in the figure below.
The configuration of a new VM topology is done in four steps:
- Select the EGI Virtual Appliance (VA) to be included in the topology
- Select the Virtual Organisation (VO) where the topology will be deployed
- Identify the Provider Endpoint where deploy the topology
- Choose the VM template for the VA
In this example, the topology is composed by only one VA (e.g. EGI Ubuntu 140.04). This VA will be deployed in the CESNET-MetaCloud provider under the fedcloud.egi.eu VO and using the small flavour as VM template.
Clicking on the Launch button the deployment process of the VM topology will start.
As soon as the topology has been deployed, from the EGI AppDB VMops dashboard the user can get the public IP address of the running VM and download the SSH public key that will be used to access.