Building a Private Cloud with Ubuntu Server 10.04 Enterprise Cloud (Eucalyptus)

Introduction
In this demonstration we will show the steps required to build a private enterprise cloud.  After the
cloud has been built we will show how to manage images, security groups, monitor resources and
deploy instances within the private cloud.  We chose Ubuntu for this demonstration as it facilitates a
rapid deployment of open source Amazon EC2 clone Eucalyptus.

Preparation

For our installation we will be using two servers, one as a cloud controller and the other as a cloud node.
Cloud instances will be running on the node, so unless the systems are identical we will choose the
system with more CPU cores and memory as our node controller.  This allows us more room for growth
in the cloud as we add instances.
We will be using the default network configuration of “Managed-NoVLAN” which provides dynamic IP
assignment for VMs and allows us to control ingress traffic by building iptables profiles known as
security groups.  Note that another mode of network configuration known as “Managed” mode provides
the additional feature of VM network isolation.
Additional Areas of Interest
Several areas we may explore if time permits include tweaking the /etc/eucalyptus/euca.conf file to
multiplex several VMs per core, adding additional nodes to the cluster, VM to VM network access
and/or isolation, custom image creation, etc.

Getting Started – Building the Cloud Controller
First we will build our cloud controller by booting from the Ubuntu 10.04 Server cdrom and selecting
“Install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud” from the menu

After making the appropriate language, country and keyboard selections, we will be prompted to
configure the network.  For this lab we will be using eth0 for both the cloud and node controllers.

Next we will assign a hostname.  We have chosen the name “cc” for our cloud controller:

Because we don’t already have a cloud controller installed on this network, we’ll select continue at this
screen:

Here we must choose the role this server will play in our cloud.  In larger and/or more complex
installations, each of the functions shown in this menu may be divided onto separate physical servers.

Eucalyptus private clouds will have a single cloud controller, but there may be multiple cluster
controllers within the cloud, and multiple node controllers reporting to each cluster controller.  Walrus
is the data storage component of Eucalyptus, which is similar to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3).

For our simplified demonstration, we will use a single-cluster installation and accept the default cloud
installation mode of Cloud controller, Walrus storage service, cluster controller, and storage controller.  

In our lab we will use the eth0 interface to connect to the public network and to communicate with the
node.

The next several screens show us accepting the default proposal for partitioning the disks:

We have one disk to present to the Ubuntu installer, which is a RAID 1+0 array we built using the HP
smart array bios:

If existing data is detected, you will notice a screen similar to this:

Here we will accept the default partitioning and configure Linux Volume Manager (LVM):

In our Lab we will keep it simple and use the entire volume group for guided partitioning:

Here we will write the new changes to disk:

Next, the installer will format the partitions and install the base system:

Here we are prompted to create a user account which will have sudo privileges.  We chose “cladmin” as
our username, with a password of “cloud9”:

Although we aren’t using automatic updates in our demonstration, it is recommended:

After answering several email-related questions, we configure the name of the cluster:

Here we provide a pool of addresses that will be automatically assigned to VMs as they are instantiated.
These addresses will be automatically assigned to cloud instances to make them accessible from outside
the cloud:

Next we install the Grand Unified Boot loader, GRUB:

This completes the initial installation of the cloud controller.

Building the Node Controller

Now that our cloud controller (and cluster controller, walrus, storage controller) has been built, we will
move on to the next server.  To begin build our node controller we will boot from the Ubuntu 10.04
Server cdrom and select “Install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud” from the menu:

After making the appropriate language, country, keyboard selections and network interface, we will be
prompted for the hostname.  We entered “nc” as the hostname of our node controller.

The installer will detect the cluster controller already running on our network, and default to a cloud
installation mode of “Node Controller” which we will accept:

After selecting the cloud installation mode, you might see a screen similar to this one if there is more
than one cluster controller on the subnet:

A word of caution: we ran into some issues when installing more than one cloud on the same subnet, so
beware!


The next several installation screens will present us with disk partitioning options, and we will use the
same settings that were used for the cloud controller, then the installation will finish the node will be
rebooted.

Now that our cloud controller and node controller have been installed, we are ready to configure
administrative access to the cloud.

Please note that from here on, we may use the hostnames “cc” and “nc” in commands.  If DNS is not
configured on your network, you will need to specify the IP address instead of the hostname.

Configuring Access for the Eucalyptus User

NOTE:  These steps are not needed if the node controller detected the cloud controller during
installation.

Step 1:
Here we will set a temporary password for the eucalyptus account.
Login to the node controller as user “cladmin” password “cloud9”:
cladmin@nc:~$ sudo passwd eucalyptus
Type “cloud9” for the temporary password.

Step 2:
Here we will login to the cloud controller and copy the ssh public key for the eucalyptus user to the node
controller:
cladmin@cc:~$ sudo -u eucalyptus ssh-copy-id -i ~eucalyptus/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
eucalyptus@nc

Step 3:
Now, from our node controller we’ll remove the temporary password:
cladmin@nc:~$ sudo passwd -d eucalyptus



Installing Cloud Administrative Credentials through the Eucalyptus Web Interface

Before we can use the Amazon EC2 command-line utilities to interact with the cloud, we will need to
install credentials which consist of x.509 certificates and environment variables.
Step 1:
Browse to the URL https://cc:8443
Login with the default username and password of admin, admin.

Step 2: 

Set a new password for the admin account and supply an email address.  The cloud host IP is 

automatically filled in and is the public facing IP for the cloud controller: click submit button

Step 3:
Now we will download our credentials.  The web front end of Eucalyptus is currently limited, so after the
initial configuration much of the administration will be done from the command line using the Amazon
EC2 tools.

On Ubuntu the name of the package is “euca2ools” and is conveniently installed by default
on our cloud controller, so we’ll be using the cloud controller as our command-line headquarters for
managing the cloud later in this guide.

To download credentials, click the “Credentials” tab and click “Download Credentials” :

Step 4:
Copy the downloaded file euca2-admin-x509.zip to /home/cladmin folder on the cloud controller.  You
can use scp, ftp, sftp, or any other preferred method.

Step 5:
Now we will create a hidden folder on the cloud controller and extract the zip file to this folder:
cladmin@cc:~$ mkdir ~/.euca
cladmin@cc:~$ cd ~/.euca
cladmin@cc:~/.euca$ unzip ../euca2-admin-x509.zip

Step 6:
Because the credentials file contains information allowing administrative access to the cloud, it is
recommended to remove the zip file and apply permissions to the .euca folder and its contents:
cladmin@cc:~/.euca$ rm ~/euca2-admin-x509.zip
cladmin@cc:~/.euca$ chmod 0700 ~/.euca
cladmin@cc:~/.euca$ chmod 0600 ~/.euca/*

Step 7:
Next we will add a line to the ~/.bashrc file on the cloud controller to ensure the necessary environment
variables are initialized upon login:
cladmin@cc:~/.euca$ echo “. ~/.euca/eucarc” >> ~/.bashrc
Step 8:
Next we will source the .bashrc file to ensure our settings take effect:
cladmin@cc:~/.euca$ source ~/.bashrc
You can log off and back on in order to ensure these settings are active.Building a Private Cloud


Installing Cloud Images
The images tab will list any images that have been registered with the cloud.  Each instance or VM
running in the cloud is based on an image.  No images exist by default after installation, so we’ll need to
install them.

Step 1:
While it is possible to build custom images and bundle, upload and register them with the cloud, for the
sake of time we will install an image from Canonical’s online cloud image store.

Clicking the “Store” tab in the web interface will show us the images that are available from Canonical
over the internet.

For our lab we will install the MediaWiki Demo Appliance image, which after
downloading the image from Canonical it will be installed to the cloud:

Step 2:
After the image has been installed, we can click on the images tab to confirm it has been registered with
the cloud:

Make a note of the emi-xxxxxx under the Id column as it will be the identifier we use to run an instance.
An emi file is the Eucalyptus equivalent of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) file from Amazon web
services, which consists of a raw disk image and a pointer to a kernel and optionally a ramdisk.


Running an Instance

Before we run an instance, we need to make sure there are sufficient resources available in the cloud
(e.g. the nodes).  We’ll use the euca-describe-availability-zones to show us all the available resources on
our cloud nodes:

Step 1: Verifying Resources

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-describe-availability-zones verbose
AVAILABILITYZONE        cluster1        144.60.26.85
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- vm types     free / max   cpu   ram  disk
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- m1.small     0016 / 0016   1    192     2
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- c1.medium    0016 / 0016   1    256     5
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- m1.large     0008 / 0008   2    512    10
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- m1.xlarge    0008 / 0008   2   1024    20
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- c1.xlarge    0004 / 0004   4   2048    20
These default availability zones can be modified under the “Administration” tab in the Eucalyptus
administrative web interface.


Step 2: Checking Images

The command “euca-describe-images” is the command-line equivalent of clicking the “Images” tab in
the Eucalyptus administrative web interface.  This shows the emi-xxxxxx identifier for each
image/bundle that will be used to run an instance.
cladmin@cc:~$ euca-describe-images

IMAGE   emi-E088107E    image-store-1276733586/image.manifest.xml       admin  
available       public          x86_64machine  eki-F6DD1103    eri-0B3E1166
IMAGE   eri-0B3E1166    image-store-1276733586/ramdisk.manifest.xml     admin  
available       public          x86_64ramdisk
IMAGE   eki-F6DD1103    image-store-1276733586/kernel.manifest.xml      admin  
available       public          x86_64kernel



Step 3: Checking Security Groups

Security groups are basically sets of iptables firewall rules that control connection requests originating
from hosts outside the cloud and destined towards virtual instances running inside the cloud.
We can view the security groups within Eucalyptus by issuing the following command:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-describe-groups

Because the security group “default” does not by default contain any rules allowing external access to
cloud instances, we’ll need to either modify the default security group or create a new group and use it
instead of the default group, and for this exercise we chose the latter, opting to create a new group
called “wiki”:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-add-group wiki -d wiki_demo_appliances
cladmin@cc:~$ euca-authorize wiki -P tcp -p 22 -s 0.0.0.0/0
cladmin@cc:~$ euca-authorize wiki -P tcp -p 80 -s 0.0.0.0/0

Running the euca-describe-groups command again should now show our newly built group.

Step 4: Installing a Keypair

We’ll need to build a keypair that will be injected into the instance allowing us to access it via ssh:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-add-keypair mykey > ~/.euca/mykey.priv
cladmin@cc:~$ chmod 0600 ~/.euca/mykey.priv

Step 5: Running the instance
Now we are finally ready to begin running instances.  We’ll start by creating an instance of our

Mediawiki appliance and we’ll assign it to the wiki security group we built earlier so that inbound
connections will be allowed on ports ssh and http:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-run-instances -g wiki -k mykey -t c1.medium emi-xxxxx

Note that if a smaller availability zone was selected for our image, it would automatically terminate
because of insufficient space.  Checking the /var/log/eucalyptus/nc.log file on the node can provide
useful clues in these cases.Building a Private Cloud


Monitoring and Accessing Instances 

After issuing the “euca-run-instances” command to run an instance, we can track its progress from
pending to running state by using the euca-describe-instances command.  We can also make a note of
the public IP assigned so we can test accessing the instance from outside the cloud.  Here we launch the
euca-run-instances command in conjunction with the “watch” utility to view output every second:

cladmin@cc:~$ watch -n1 euca-describe-instances

It may be useful at times to see the console output of an instance.  We can use the euca-get-consoleoutput command for this task, where i-xxxxxx corresponds to the image ID listed by the “euca-describeinstances” command:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-get-console-output i-xxxxxxx

Because we allowed ssh in our security group, we can access the wiki via ssh using the key we specified
when creating the instance:
cladmin@cc:~$ ssh -i ~/.euca/mykey.priv ubuntu@w.x.y.z
Using the public IP, we should also browse to the URL of the instance to ensure the wiki is available:
http://w.x.y.z/mediawiki

Maxing out the Cloud

To get a feel for the performance under load, we can spin up instances in all the remaining availability
zones.  First we’ll want to confirm what we have available:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-describe-availability zones verbose

AVAILABILITYZONE        cluster1        144.60.26.85
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- vm types     free / max   cpu   ram  disk
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- m1.small     0015 / 0016   1    192     2
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- c1.medium    0015 / 0016   1    256     5
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- m1.large     0007 / 0008   2    512    10
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- m1.xlarge    0007 / 0008   2   1024    20
AVAILABILITYZONE        |- c1.xlarge    0003 / 0004   4   2048    20

We can see how long it takes to spin up 15 instances of the wiki image on our DL380:

cladmin@cc:~$ euca-run-instances –g wiki -n xyz -k mykey -t c1.medium emi-xxxxx
cladmin@cc:~$ date
cladmin@cc:~$ watch -n2 euca-describe-instances
cladmin@cc:~$ date

Again, we can visit the URL of any of the new instances to see that the instance is up and running and
responding to external connections.

Notes

The transient nature of cloud instances:

Once an instance is terminated, all data is lost.  One way around this limitation is to configure Elastic
Block Storage (EBS) and install the OS of the image inside a chroot environment on the EBS volume.
High Availability:

There isn’t much in the way of HA in a default installation of Eucalyptus, although the developers are
almost certainly working on something in this department due to the demand.  In the meantime there
are probably a few Eucalyptus users out there who have either written scripts to detect an instance is no
longer running and launch it on another node, or who are investigating something along those lines.


Q&A
For more information:
http://open.eucalyptus.com/forum
http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/private
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-server