Provisioning a Sci VM in a Managed Cloud Tenancy
This article is for admin and manager of the JASMIN managed-cloud Sci tenancy. It illustrates how to provision a sci VM within a JASMIN managed-cloud Sci tenancy. It involves the following:
- Becoming a member of a managed cloud Sci tenancy
- Provisioning a VM
The Sci tenancy has four access roles:
- Manager role: can approve Deputy, ADMIN, and USER roles access requests
- Deputy manager role: can approve ADMIN and USER roles access requests
- ADMIN role: can access the cloud portal and can restart or provision the Sci VM
- USER role: can log in into the Sci VM from the JASMIN login node login1.jasmin.ac.uk
Note: Manager, Deputy Manager, and ADMIN have access to the JASMIN cloud portal
Apply for access to the Sci tenancy
A managed cloud Sci tenancy is accessible via the JASMIN cloud portal and this access is controlled by the "Sci Analysis VMs" service via the JASMIN accounts portal. See here for instructions about requesting access to the USER and ADMIN roles via the Sci Analysis VMs service on the JASMIN accounts portal.
1. Access the tenancy
With an ADMIN role, you can log in to the JASMIN cloud portal using the same credentials for signing onto the JASMIN accounts portal.
You will be presented with the "Dashboard" page -below- showing the tenancies you have access to. On the dashboard, select the organization representing the tenancy to find out the VM provisioned within a given tenancy, e.g ncas-sci-M
Note: The "
2. Provision a virtual machine
Step 1: Select "Machines" from the top menu, then click "New machine" to create a new VM. Choose a name for the new VM. Then select a size from the drop-down menu which shows the catalog of VM template size. For example, select "j4.large" which allocates 8 CPUs and 32GB of RAM resources for the new VM
IMPORTANT: A Sci machine should be deployed with a minimum of 2 GB RAM
IMPORTANT: A Sci machine name should not exceed 8 characters long. The preferred naming format is sci<number> e.g. sci1
The VM with the chosen name ncas-sci1 is created and it is running as shown below.
Step 2: Attach an external IP to the new VM by clicking "Actions" and selecting "Attach external IP". Note that you can restart the VM from the "Actions" menu.
Step 3: From the box that pops up -see image below- click on the "+" (green button) to add an IP. Then click on the down arrow next to "Select an external IP" you will see the IP address to assign to the machine, select the IP and click attach IP
Step 4: Click "Attach IP"
Important note: As ADMIN and MANAGER of a Sci tenancy, you should note the "External IP" as this is the IP address you will need to provide to your users in order for them to connect to the machine via SSH using the JASMIN login server login1.jasmin.ac.
Step 5: An overview of the resources used by the VM is shown below
Note 1: Only ADMIN and MANAGER roles have access to the JASMIN cloud portal and can provision VMs. ADMIN and MANAGER roles of a Sci tenancy will not be granted root access.
Note 2: ADMIN and MANAGER roles will not allow you to SSH into the Sci VM. It is necessary to have a USER role to do so.
3. Connect to Sci analysis VMs
From login1.jasmin.ac.uk, login to the machine using the External IP address. In the same way, as you login to a JASMIN scientific server via login1. Your initial connection to JASMIN from your local machine needs to have your SSH key loaded in your SSH authentication agent, and you must have SSH Agent Forwarding enabled "-A", see also how to login.
Note that although the new provisioned Sci VM has a local hostname (in this example, sci1-202012041148.ncas-sci-m.jasmin.ac.
Note: Users should report issues to the ADMIN and/or MANAGER of the tenancy based SCI VM.