Quickstart¶

This quickstart assumes you have already performed the following

installed cloudmesh
installed MongoDB either with the help of cloudmesh or another method

One of the features of Cloudmesh is to easily start new virtual machines on various clouds. It uses defaults for these clouds that can be changed but are easily stored in a YAML file located at ~/.cloudmesh/cloudmesh.yaml This file is created upon the first start of the shell. You need to edit it and include some of your cloud information.

A template for the YAML file is located at:

https://github.com/cloudmesh/cloudmesh-cloud/blob/master/cloudmesh/etc/cloudmesh.yaml

Make sure that if you edited the YAML file that you check if it is correctly formatted. This can be done with

cms config check

Configuration with the GUI¶

Cloudmesh comes with a simple GUI program that can only be used on the machines natively. E.g. It does not work in containers and the Linux Subsystem on Windows.

To install it as a user you can do it with:

pip install cloudmesh-gui

You will have the command cms gui available. You will need to configure the profile, activate clouds and add credentials for a cloud. For this, you can use:

cms gui quick
cms gui profile
cms gui activate
cms gui cloud chameleon
cms gui mongo user

We assume here you like to configure the credentials for the chameleon cloud.

Figure: Setting the profile cms gui profile¶

Figure: Activate clouds cms gui activate¶

Figure: Update credentials cms gui cloud chameleon¶

Manual¶

Before we start it is important to note that cloudmesh provides a quick way to look at its documentation with

cms open doc

Generating the Key and Certificate¶

If you do not have yet generated an ssh key you will have to do it now. First, you need to create a public-private key with a passphrase. This can be achieved with the following command

cms config ssh keygen

Alternatively, you can create a key as follows

ssh-keygen -t rsa -m pem

In case you already have a key, that is not in pem format, you can convert it with

openssl rsa -in ~/.ssh/id_rsa -out ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pem

Validate and verify the key¶

To validate the key please use the cms commands

cms config ssh check
cms config ssh verify

Initialization¶

To initialize cloudmesh and its database the easiest way is calling the commands:

cms init

Note that the init command also starts the MongoDB. This needs to be done only one time. From now on you can start and stop cloudmesh with:

cms start

We recommend that after you are done working with cloudmesh to stop it with:

cms stop

Initialize keys and Security Groups¶

cms set cloud=chameleon
cms sec load
cms sec group load default --cloud=chameleon
cms key upload --cloud=chameleon

Command line¶

After you started cms you can issue a number of commands. The benefit of cloudmesh is that it is easy to switch between clouds with the set command. After the set and specifying the cloud by name many commands will default to that cloud. The exception is the vm list command that lists by default all vms on all clouds. In addition, the vm refresh command will also work on all clouds.

cms start

cms set cloud=chameleon
cms set refresh=True

cms vm boot
cms image list
cms flavor list

cms set cloud=aws
cms vm boot
cms image list
cms flavor list

cms set cloud=azure
cms vm boot
cms image list
cms flavor list

cms set cloud=jetstream
cms vm boot
cms image list
cms flavor list

cms set cloud=vagrant
cms vm boot
cms image list
cms flavor list

cms vm refresh
cms vm list

cms stop

In case you want a command explicitly apply to one or more clouds or one or more vms, they can be specified by name such as

cms vm list --name vm[0-100]
cms vm list --cloud aws,azure

Defaults for the cloud and the name can be specified through set such as

cms set name=vm[0-100]
cms set cloud=aws,azure

Using the commands

cms vm list

would then add the appropriate options to the command. To reset the show to all vms set name and cloud to all

cms set name=all
cms set cloud=all

Interactive shell¶

Cloudmesh uses cmd5 for its shell implementation and thus all commands that are typed in in the terminal can also be typed in into a shell that is started with cms

cms
cms> set cloud=aws
cms> vm boot

Command scripts¶

As we use cmd5 we also have access to piped and named scripts with

echo script.cms | cms

and

cms --script script.cms

Cache¶

All information about for example virtual machines are cached locally. The cache for various information sources can be explicitly updated with the --refresh flag. Thus the command

cms vm list --refresh
cma flavor list --refresh
cma image list --refresh

would first execute a refresh while the command

cms vm list
cms flavor list
cms image list

would only read from the local cache. To change the behavior and always do a refresh from the cloud you can use the command

cms set refresh=True

To switch it off you can say

cms set refresh=False

Using quotes¶

Warning

In case you need to use quotes in the command line you need to mask them with a backslash on Linux and macOS and with 3 quotes in Windows, as this is a feature of your shell.

Thus you would use

cms vm list --cloud=\"chameleon\"

However, as there are no quotes needed in the previous command it can simply be written as

cms vm list –cloud=chameleon

There are two exceptions that we implemented on Linux and macOS. Here the commands

cms set x="variable with spaces"
cms config set x="variable with spaces"

It Will also work, e.g. the backslash is not needed.

However, on windows, you need to use the three quotes such as

cms set x=”””variable with spaces”””

Configuring chameleon cloud¶

In many of the classes, we teach you will have access to chameleon cloud. You will get a cloudmesh.yaml file as part of the class in which you only need to set your username and your password. This is done on the terminal with

cms config set cloudmesh.cloud.chameleon.credentials.OS_USERNAME=YOURUSERNAME
cms config set cloudmesh.cloud.chameleon.credentials.OS_PASSWORD=YOURPASSWORD

Where YOURUSERNAME, and YOURPASSWORD is the account name and password from the account giving you access to

https://www.chameleoncloud.org/

Thus if you have an account and are part of the class project, you can gain access to an OpenStack cloud in seconds via cloudmesh.

Timer¶

Cloudmesh has the ability to print the time it takes to execute a command. You can switch it on with

cms set timer=true

Debugging¶

Cloudmesh has some debugging features build in. To switch them on or of, please use the commands

cms debug on
cms debug on

In the case of on the following values are set:

cms set debug=True
cms set trace=True
cms set verbose=10
cms set timer=True

After setting them additional debug messages will be printed.

In the case of off the following values are set:

cms set debug=False
cms set trace=False
cms set verbose=0
cms set timer=True

These values can also be individually controlled with the set command.