HPC Cloud Tutorial
Part B

This is part B of the HPC Cloud Tutorial and covers the following topics:

1. Persistence
2. Scaling up to a multicore VM
3. Working with storage

NOTES:

If you have not completed (and understood) Part A, please do so first.

For the rest of the tutorial we will omit the ubuntu@ip-145...:~$ prompt in the instructions. It allows you to copy-n-paste the commands directly to your terminal.

1. Persistence

Images can be persistent or non-persistent and you can change this mode at will.

• What does persistent mean?
  • Changes made by the VM are copied back to the original image (upon normal VM shutdown)
  • If a VM is running with a persistent disk, you cannot launch a second VM using that same image
• What does non-persistent mean?
  • Changes made by a VM are lost at shutdown and not copied back to the original image
  • It is possible to run multiple VMs using the same single non-persistent image

Food for brain:

Was the first image that you imported persistent?

In this section you will work with persistent images. You will go through these steps:

• Making your image persistent.
• Starting a VM using the persistent image.

Making your image persistent

• Go to the Images tab under Storage on the left menu. Select the image by clicking anywhere, except the tick-box, on the row for the image you created before (Course Image).
• On the Info tab , under the Information section, find the Persistent attribute. It says No at the moment.
• Switch the value to Yes by clicking on the pencil icon .

Starting a persistent VM

• Start your virtual machine (VM) again.
• Log in and check the files you created during the previous run (Part A).

Food for brain:

• Is/are the file(s) you created on your VM (part A) there?
• During the previous run, the VM’s disk was non-persistent. From now on, you can store data in your VM that will be written to the image even if you restart your VM. Try it.

You can now shut your VM down.

2. Scaling up to a multicore VM

The HPC Cloud is offered as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). That allows you to give your VMs the form that you need them to have. In this section, you will start a four-core VM, using the exact same image, the Course Image. To scale-up your VM to use multiple cores you will be:

• Editing your template.
• Re-instantiating a VM from the modified template.

Edit the template

You can customise your VMs by editing the templates you instantiate the VMs from.

• In order to edit your existing template, from the VMs tab under Templates on the left menu, choose the Course Template. Then click on the Update button on the top left of the screen.
• In the General tab edit the number of CPU and VCPU as:
  • CPU: 4
  • VCPU: 4
• When you are done, click on the green Update button so that your changes are actually saved.

From now on, whenever you instantiate this template, you will get a 4-core VM running using the same Course Image.

Food for brain:

After changing the template as described above, how many cores do you expected your VM to have? Does changing a template affect the currently running VM’s that are based on it?

Instantiate the four-core VM

• Instantiate a VM from the updated template.
• Login to the VM. Is your data there?
• You can verify that you are logged in on a four-core VM with either of the following commands:
  • cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
  • lscpu

Shut down the four-core VM

• Choose the VM from your list
• Click on the red dust bin and, under that, click the option Terminate.

3. Working with Storage

The current HPC Cloud offers two storage types: Ceph and SSD. Data stored on Ceph is replicated to protect against data loss in case of hardware failure. Our recommended best practice is to run your operating system on a small SSD image and store your bulk data on Ceph datablock(s).

When you create an image, you must choose where it is stored, under the heading Datastore. You have the choice between Courses_img (SSD) and ceph. When you imported your first App in tutorial Part A, you created an image containing an Ubuntu 18.04 OS on Courses_img (SSD). In this section we’re introducing to you the ceph datastore option. You can create an image in ceph datastore by following these steps:

• Creating a new empty image for bulk data
• Adding the new image to the template
• Mounting the image in the VM

At this point you should not have any running VMs. If you do, shut them down.

Creating a new empty image for bulk data

Let’s create a new image.

• On the UI, from the menu on the left, under the Storage option, select the Images tab .
• Click the green button on the top .
• In the Create image screen fill in the form as:
  • Name: my data. You will use this name later in your template.
  • Type: Generic storage datablock.
  • Datastore: 106: ceph.
  • Check the This image is persistent checkbox.
  • On the Image location: group choose radio button Empty disk image.
  • Give it a Size in MB: 2000 (is 2GB, approximately).
• Click the green button Create at the top to create it.

NOTE:

A new image will show on the Images list and it will keep in status LOCKED while it is being created. Once it is created it will display status READY. Then you still have to format and mount the disk; you will be doing that just in a moment.

Adding the new image to the template

In order to let your VM know about the new datablock, you need to add it to your VM’s template:

• Open the screen to edit the template (or create a new one from scratch).
• Select the Storage tab .
• Click on the blue button , that will make a new Disk 1, and then choose the my data image you created as a second image.
• Finish with the Update button on the top to submit the changes.

Mounting the image in the VM

Let’s start using the new disk.

• Instantiate a new VM from the Template you modified in the previous step.
• Once the VM is in RUNNING state, login and check that your new datablock is available there:

sudo fdisk -l

Note: If above sudo command displays the message sudo: unable to resolve host ip-145-100-... just ignore it.

Food for brain:

You should see (probably, as a last line of the output of the previous command) something like: Disk /dev/vdb doesn't contain a valid partition table. The output should also inform that there is a Disk with approximately of the size you typed in the UI in the previous step. What is that Disk’s name?

• Create the directory where you will mount the Ceph datablock and format the drive (xfsprogs is installed on the image):

sudo mkdir /data  
sudo mkfs -t xfs /dev/vdb  

• Mount the datadisk in the VM:

sudo mount /dev/vdb /data  

• Arrange the permissions to allow non-root access to the /data directory:

sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu -R /data

Food for brain:

Create new files or folders in your in /data directory. Logout and login again. Are your changes still there? Check with ls /data/. Shut the VM down and start it again. Do you see the files on the datablock? Hint: when you start the VM the datablock is not automatically mounted. You should issue the mount command once again.

• From now on, you can transfer files from your laptop on the newly created disk.

Food for brain:

Try to copy a file from your laptop to /data, e.g. with scp myfile ubuntu@145.100.5Q.RST:/data. Log in to the VM and inspect the changes.

BONUS food for brain

This section is meant to propose extra questions we thought would be nice for you to investigate. We invite you to do/think about them even after the workshop has finished.

Bonus: In Parts A & B of the workshop you have explored the UI and learnt how to import an appliance from the Apps Market. However, many people come to the HPC Cloud because they can install and run their own operating system. In particular, Windows is very popular among our users.

• Can you think of (and sketch) the steps that you would need to follow to create a VM running your favourite operating system?
• Can you find three articles in the HPC Cloud Documentation that show how to install different operating systems from scratch?

NOTE:

Play around, make your checks and shut down all the VMs when you are done. Your running VMs are consuming quota whether they are doing something useful or are idle.

Next: part C

You completed part A of the HPC Cloud Tutorial. Please continue with Tutorial Part C.