Re: Network Setup
Arbin, I have a little VCL playground set up on a Dell desktop configured similarly to what you described. The public network is on a vSwitch that routes through eth0, but it has a single static IP assigned to it so I don't use DHCP. The private network is only connected via a (different) vSwitch. I think the challenge will come in with the DHCP part. I believe the VCL software expects to manage the assignment of external IP addresses to VMs. In other words, it assumes a block of routable IPv4 addresses are assigned to it to manage. Hence a DHCP server on the external network would conflict with the VCL management of those addresses. Someone with more experience setting things up could tell you for sure but that is how I understand it to work. Mark On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 7:10 PM, Sanders, Arbin D asand...@nccu.edu wrote: All, ** ** From the documentation, VCL has to have two networks, Private and Public. My question is can they be setup within VMware where the public IP can routed through the eth0 and get a DHCP address and the private IP can be routed through a vSwitch? ** ** Do all of you have two vlans provided by a physical switch? ** ** Any info would be helpful. ** ** *Arbin Darren Sanders* IT Manager – Academic Computing North Carolina Central University 712 Cecil Street Suite 3014 Durham, NC 27707 919.530.6307 919.530.5097 (Fax) ** ** *For the Latest ITS Updates and Tips Join Us Online** ** **[image: Description: Description: Description: Description: cid:image003.png@01CB6AD0.97665900]*http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=66100342#!/pages/Durham-NC/NCCU-Eagle-Technical-Assistance-Center-ETAC/249508718552?v=info * *[image: Description: Description: Description: Description: cid:image004.png@01CB6AD0.97665900] http://twitter.com/NCCUETAC CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorized disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this e-mail from your system. ** ** __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ -- Mark Gardner --
Re: Preferred Password under User Preferences ?
In general, I would rather keep things as they are. But if that capability is added, I would prefer to have it be an option as the current one-time random password is much more secure. (Our experience is that users generally pick poor passwords. Perhaps this can be a development-only option?) Mark On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Dmitri Chebotarov dcheb...@gmu.edu wrote: Hi Would it be possible, and is it good idea in general due to possible security risks, to add Preferred Password field on User Preferences page (under RDP File Preferences or Personal Information?) to allow user to provide a password for all his/her reservations? Then VCL would use this password (if it's there) for reservations instead of auto-generated password. This is not an auto-connect option, but at least it will make it easier to use VCL. For the last couple days I've been using VCL for some testing and it would be nice to have the same password for all my reservations. -- Thank you, Dmitri Chebotarov Virtual Computing Lab Systems Engineer, TSD - Ent Servers Messaging 223 Aquia Building, Ffx, MSN: 1B5 Phone: (703) 993-6175 Fax: (703) 993-3404 -- Mark Gardner --
Re: [DISCUSS] Graduation - Prepare Board Resolution
Andy, I believe one of the strengths of VCL is in its ability to manage software license issues and use roles to manage who has access to what. Is this something that should be included or should we save that for a later and longer description further down the page. Mark On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Andy Kurth andy_ku...@ncsu.edu wrote: I have created a Confluence page which we can use to work out the board resolution: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/VCL/Graduation+Board+Resolution Once we are comfortable with the resolution, one of the PPMC members will propose it on the general incubator list. The areas we need to work on are in bold. We need to define the project description and scope. I wrote this as dynamically provisioning and brokering remote access to compute resources. Thoughts? Please check the list of initial members to make sure I didn't leave anyone out. This list includes both PPMC members and committers, correct? If we are in agreement that the list will be the committers after graduation, should the status file be changed now? The PPMC members also need to appoint a chair for the project. I would be willing to do this. Anyone else interested? Also, 2 more issues regarding the status file: The stock bullets under Project info should be removed. The description is currently VCL is a management framework for building, dispensing and managing virtual machine images across a set of bare metal machines or systems with an installed virtual machine hypervisor. I don't think this is quite accurate. How about VCL is a modular cloud computing platform which dynamically provisions and brokers remote access to compute resources.? Thanks, Andy -- Mark Gardner --
Re: Other Uses for VCL
I am considering using it as a platform for custom portals for various research and department projects. Mark On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Sanders, Arbin D asand...@nccu.edu wrote: All, ** ** I am apologize in advance for posting to both groups but I think each one has its own unique info and opinions. As NCCU goes into the new fiscal year, I am looking at acquiring more hardware and software for NCCU VCL project. Do any of you all have other uses for VCL other than HPC and Virtual Desktops? ** ** Thanks in advance! ** ** *Arbin Darren Sanders* IT Manager – Academic Computing North Carolina Central University 712 Cecil Street Suite 3014 Durham, NC 27707 919.530.6307 919.530.5097 (Fax) ** ** *For the Latest ITS Updates and Tips Join Us Online** ** **[image: Description: Description: Description: Description: cid:image003.png@01CB6AD0.97665900]*http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=66100342#!/pages/Durham-NC/NCCU-Eagle-Technical-Assistance-Center-ETAC/249508718552?v=info * *[image: Description: Description: Description: Description: cid:image004.png@01CB6AD0.97665900] http://twitter.com/NCCUETAC CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorized disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this e-mail from your system. ** ** __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ -- Mark Gardner --
Re: [DISCUSS] Graduation
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Kevan Miller kevan.mil...@gmail.com wrote: So far, I've seen input from 4 committers and 4 community members (unless I have names mixed up). Would be great to hear from more people (especially committers). Even if it's let's graduate, already! --kevan Let's graduate, already! :-) Mark -- Mark Gardner --
Re: Long term reservation
Aaron, If I may suggest, we should start a page on the wiki with hardware configurations people have successfully deployed on. This is a very daunting area for someone who is contemplating an installation. There is already a few hints on the wiki about NC State's hardware (but perhaps a bit more detail would be useful). It would be good if more people listed their diverse configurations in detail. Right now I have an installation on a modest desktop system (mostly to cement my understanding after last summer's bootcamp). I can put that up. I will also be doing a real deployment soon and can put that up too as I have completed it. Mark On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 8:42 AM, Aaron Peeler fapee...@ncsu.edu wrote: Hi Emir, I'll try to answer, but hopefully Andy will chime in to confirm. In the upcoming release, the copying vmdk for long-term reservations has been fixed. It's using snapshots to achieve. Resulting in faster boot time. On the vms per host question. This is very good question. So far your 100 vms per host is the highest I've heard about. As your aware, the number of vms and end-user performance is going to depend on the underlying hardware (host memCPU, network, and storage). It would be good as a community for us to share hardware recommendations on what is working well at their own site. We have a mix of hardware at NCSU, I'll write up some details and send that out in a separate thread soon. Aaron On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Emir Imamagic eimam...@srce.hr wrote: Hello, We've noticed that in case of long term reservations VCL copies the virtual disk of image on datastore. In case of images with many subimages (20) we experienced problems with this copying. VCL would initiate multiple vmkfstools commands, ESXi server would get overloaded and start killing vmkfstools processes (messages were indicating lack of memory). Is there any way to bypass this behavior? Is this copying really needed? Is it possibly to switch it off in a clean manner? Another question is - how many VMs can vcld handle per a single VM host (VMware ESXi 4.1)? On our setup we managed to start 100 VMs on a single VMware host and it was still working fine. VM host has 24 cores and 256GB RAM. Thanks in advance -- Emir Imamagic SRCE - University of Zagreb University Computing Centre, www.srce.unizg.hr emir.imama...@srce.hr, tel: +385 1 616 5809, fax: +385 1 616 5559 -- Aaron Peeler Program Manager Virtual Computing Lab NC State University All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties. -- Mark Gardner --
Re: Setting up local accounts
Thanks Josh. It did. I have it working now. (Wonder why I couldn't find it earlier.) Mark On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Josh Thompson josh_thomp...@ncsu.eduwrote: Mark, This page should get you started: https://cwiki.apache.org/VCL/granting-access-to-a-new-image.html It explains how to grant users access to a new image, but it covers everything needed to grant a user access to an existing image. Josh On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Mark Gardner m...@vt.edu wrote: I tried to set up a local account for my manager to play around with the VCL. I saw from the documentation that accounts are created via vcld --setup. But the new user has access to no images. What do I need to do to finish connecting the dots so a local user can make a reservation. (BTW, I created a imageUser@Local group to put him in. I don't know how to do that nor do I know how to give imageUser access to any images.) Mark -- Mark Gardner -- -- Mark Gardner --
Setting up local accounts
I tried to set up a local account for my manager to play around with the VCL. I saw from the documentation that accounts are created via vcld --setup. But the new user has access to no images. What do I need to do to finish connecting the dots so a local user can make a reservation. (BTW, I created a imageUser@Local group to put him in. I don't know how to do that nor do I know how to give imageUser access to any images.) Mark -- Mark Gardner --
Re: VCL Bootcamp notes on creating base images
I appear to be sneaking up on it... However image capture failed again. I am enclosing an excerpt from the log. Not sure what the problem is but it appears that it found a vmdk when it didn't expect to find one. This may be due to my misconfiguration of the VMHost - local storage. I specified the Data Store Path to be /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/datastore and the Repository Path to be /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/repository and created those directories. Mark -- Mark Gardner -- vcld.log-excerpt Description: Binary data
Re: VCL Bootcamp notes on creating base images
Thanks Aaron. On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Aaron Peeler aaron_pee...@ncsu.edu wrote: The first one means you have to have computer nodes and the exsi host added to the vcl database. I think I have the ESXi host added to the database (through the web GUI). I also added a VM. They show up in Manage Computers-Computer Utilities as shown below: Hostname IP Address StateOwnerSchedule Current Image Next Image VM Host esxi-host-1 pubIP1vmhostinuse admin@Local VCL 24x7 No Image No ImageN/A vm-1 pubIP2maintenance admin@Local VCL 24x7 No Image No ImageN/A The vcld --setup tool pulls the target node and esxi host information from the database. Aaron I think I remembered another detail from the bootcamp. We were supposed to create an OS installation outside of VCL (in other words not using a reservation but directly in ESXi). That is the image that is pulled in through vcld --setup, right? Mark -- Mark Gardner --
Re: VCL Bootcamp notes on creating base images
OK next problem: I selected VMware ESX - local network storage originally for the VM host profile as that is what we used during the bootcamp but the paths are wrong (e.g., /vmfs/volumes/local-datastore vs /vmfs/volumes/datastore1). I can edit the profile but in reality it should be VMware ESX - local storage (I will still need to correct the path). How do I change which profile is associated with a VM host? Mark -- Mark Gardner --
VCL Bootcamp notes on creating base images
Are the notes from the recent VCL bootcamp discussing how to create base images up somewhere? Mark -- Mark Gardner --
Re: recordings and slides from NCSU workshop
Josh, Have the Google Docs that went with the last session been posted also? Mark On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Josh Thompson josh_thomp...@ncsu.eduwrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 NCSU recently hosted a VCL workshop that consisted of two remote sessions that covered image creation and a 3 day on site portion that covered VCL installation. The remote sessions were recorded and are available online to anyone that would like to view them. Slides used for the onsite portion are available at the same location (though some are still being put online). Information is available at the following URL: http://renoir.csc.ncsu.edu/VCL/Program/program.html Josh - -- - --- Josh Thompson VCL Developer North Carolina State University my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAk42nEEACgkQV/LQcNdtPQPWTQCaA31FvyRvDweqjY3eOtEOlNXF ikMAnjxsCo9Q59ZUR7+NhAgx88UdrZom =67Yy -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Mark Gardner --
Re: recordings and slides from NCSU workshop
Never mind, I found them at http://renoir.csc.ncsu.edu/VCL/Program/Bootcamp%20Notes.pdf. Mark On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 3:46 PM, Mark Gardner m...@vt.edu wrote: Josh, Have the Google Docs that went with the last session been posted also? Mark On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Josh Thompson josh_thomp...@ncsu.eduwrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 NCSU recently hosted a VCL workshop that consisted of two remote sessions that covered image creation and a 3 day on site portion that covered VCL installation. The remote sessions were recorded and are available online to anyone that would like to view them. Slides used for the onsite portion are available at the same location (though some are still being put online). Information is available at the following URL: http://renoir.csc.ncsu.edu/VCL/Program/program.html Josh - -- - --- Josh Thompson VCL Developer North Carolina State University my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAk42nEEACgkQV/LQcNdtPQPWTQCaA31FvyRvDweqjY3eOtEOlNXF ikMAnjxsCo9Q59ZUR7+NhAgx88UdrZom =67Yy -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Mark Gardner -- -- Mark Gardner --
