Tutorials/CloudSim/1.3/administration

CloudSim administration ==

This tutorial describes how to:
 * Login to a CloudSim instance.
 * Add/remove users.
 * Change Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials.

Important: you must determine the proper availability zone to run CloudSim.

Introduction ===

CloudSim runs in a dedicated Cloud Instance, and it is reachable via a public URL. CloudSim requires users to have a Google gmail account to log in. However, CloudSim is not open to just anybody. Only the users in the CloudSim's user list are allowed to log in to a running instance of CloudSim.

Log in to CloudSim ===

Point your browser to the CloudSim instance. You should land on the login page.



Following the login link should bring you to the OpenID page where you can choose the provider. At this time, only Google is supported.



Once you have entered your credentials at Google, you should be redirected to the version page. Follow the `Console` link to get to the web app.



This is the CloudSim console. It shows
 * The CloudSim logo on the top left corner
 * The logged in user, logout link and settings link on the top right corner
 * The constellation launcher widget
 * The list of running constellations.
 * The CloudSim version information

CloudSim is capable of launching multiple machines that work together for during a single simulation campaign. CloudSim uses the term constellation for this concept. In CloudSim, machines can only be launched within the context of a constellation, so it is possible to encounter constellations that only contain a single machine.



For adding users or modifying your AWS credentials, access the settings page by clicking on the settings link on the top right corner.

Add users ===

CloudSim organizes users by their internet domains (i.e osrfoundation.org). Users can therefore start/stop and monitor constellations of all users from the same domain.

Users with administrative privileges can perform the following additional tasks: add / remove users and change the AWS credentials.



To Add a user, type in a valid Google email address in the text box, select the type of user from the drop down menu (user or admin), and press the "Add user" button.

To remove a user, press the "X" button next to the user name.

You may need to reload the page to see the effect of user additions and removals.

Warning: Do not remove the last remaining administrative user, or you'll lose access to this CloudSim instance!

Override the AWS credentials === This feature allows users with administrative privileges to set new AWS credentials. By default, the AWS credentials used to launch CloudSim will be used by CloudSim to launch other machines.

Just type in the new credentials and press the "override" button. This will check the credentials against AWS before accepting new ones.



Important notes:
 * Overriding credentials affects all constellations operations. Any new constellation launches will be performed using the new credentials, and billed to the corresponding AWS user. Therefore, this operation should only be performed when no constellation is running (because you may not be able to control existing machines with the new credentials).
 * Overriding the credentials has no effect on the CloudSim machine itself, and it continues running under its current account.

Determining the proper availability zone === The only way to determine the proper availability zone is to try to launch VPC_trio constellations and use the error messages to guide you. Unfortunately, this may require a trial and error approach. Make sure you have your key and secret keys at hand. If you are using a wrong availability zone, you should get one of these errors: See Troubleshooting CloudSim.
 * Subnet error: subnets can only be created in the following availability zones: ...
 * Unsupported VPC error: please retry your request using availability zone xxx

SSH access to the CloudSim machine ===

Users with administrative privileges can connect to the CloudSim instance via ssh. To do so, they need to download the ssh key by following the "SSH key download" link at the top right of the screen. This downloads a zip file that contains the ssh key (key-xxx.pem) and a script to connect to the machine (ssh.sh).



This example unzips a downloaded key file and sources the ssh.sh command to log into the CloudSim instance: unzip ~/Downloads/cloudsim_ssh.zip cloudsim_xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/ssh.bash

The actual file that contains the users (in a JSON format) is:

/var/www-cloudsim-auth/users

Also, the Amazon keys are stored here:

/var/www-cloudsim-auth/boto-useast

Other things you can do:
 * use the redis database to inspect or get rid of CloudSim state
 * get key files for all machines. They are stored in:

/var/www-cloudsim-auth/machines

Other administrative privileges ===

Users with administrative privileges also have an extending list of constellation types they can launch. For example, it is possible to launch another CloudSim instance (using the current AWS credentials, and the current user as administrator).

How to stop CloudSim ===

When you're done using CloudSim you can terminate it via your AWS Console, as you would terminate any other EC2 machine. Note that CloudSim runs on a `micro` instance, which is free for most AWS users. So it's probably OK to leave your CloudSim instance running even when you're not using it.

Warning: Before terminating a CloudSim instance, be sure to use the CloudSim interface to terminate all machines that were launched via CloudSim. Otherwise, you could lose track of launched machines, leading to unexpected EC2 usage charges.


 * 1) Next ##

Next: Start/stop a single simulation in the cloud