Service Engineering (ICCLab & SPLab)

A Blog of the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Month: June 2012 (page 1 of 2)

Automating The ICCLab: Part Two

27. June 2012 / / 0 Comments

In [the previous post](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/2012/06/automating-the-icclab-part-two/) we looked at getting Foreman setup and installed. In this post we’ll run through how you can provision bare metal hosts using Foreman. The first thing that we’ll need to do is configuring Foreman for provisioning! Don’t forget [a VM in which all of this is setup is available](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ForemanV.ova).

## Configuring Foreman to Provision Bare Metal

You will now need to configure Foreman. To do this you need to create the following pieces of information:

0. **Architectures**

Here, if they are not already populated, you need to enter in the OS hardware architectures that are required for your infrastructure fleet. Common architectures include ‘i386’ and ‘x86_64’.

1. **Smart Proxies**

Smart proxies are the entities that interact with the core infrastructural services like DNS, DHCP, TFTP etc. When setting up your Foreman instance you need to tell Foreman where its location is by creating a new Smart Proxy entry and supplying its URL.

2. **Domains**

Here you need to enter in the domain name system information. All that is needed is the top level domain name (e.g. mydomain.com) and an identifier (e.g. “the main TLD”). If your smart proxy has DNS enabled then ensure the DNS value is populated. This value specifies what smart proxy DNS service to use when adding new DNS entries.

Once the smart proxy and DNS entries are entered, go back to the Smart Proxies section and click on ‘Import Subnets’. This will populate Foreman with the required networking information needed to allocate IP addresses against a newly provisioned machine.

3. **Subnets**

If you carried out the auto-import of subnets when setting up your smart proxy you shouldn’t need to change this, unless you want to add more or modify subnets.

4. **Environments**

Environments specify a group of puppet modules that can be applied against a newly provisioned host. To import default ones, `cd /usr/share/foreman` and execute `rake puppet:import:puppet_classes[batch] RAILS_ENV=production`. See the [Foreman wiki page](http://theforeman.org/projects/foreman/wiki/External_Nodes) for further details. You can also import existing environments, along with their associated classes, by navigating to the ‘Puppet Classes’ section and clicking on ‘Import new puppet classes and environments’.

5. **Installation Media**

To install an operating system you need to specify the location of where the source files will come from. Foreman supplies you with some installation media locations to begin with and you can add more either remote or local ones. A suggested minor edit with the default Foreman installation media is to change the mirrors that are closest to you.

**Tip**: Setup a caching server to cache all your downloaded operating system files (e.g. apt-cacher NG for Debian based systems; [puppet module here](https://github.com/lelutin/puppet-apt-cacher-ng)), otherwise you can install from local media locations, say, distributed over HTTP.

6. **Operating Systems**

In the case that you want to deploy Operating Systems to hosts, you will need to define the operating systems that you support. To do this create an operating system entry. Once done go to the Provisioning Template section.

7. **Provisioning Template**

The provisioning templates are key in the TFTP and DHCP boot process of your new host. These specify, depending on the OS automation suite (e.g. preseed, kickstart etc.), how the OS should be installed on the new host, how disk partitions should be setup, what OS packages should be installed etc.

An **important thing to do** here is to create a ‘Default PXE Menu’. This will allow for PXE boots with a fall back of boot by local disk, should a host have an OS already installed.

You need to specify the template for the appropriate operating systems you are supporting. In the case of Ubuntu OS’s you will need to go to each ‘Preseed’ entry and ensure that it is associated to the Ubuntu Operating systems. Once done go back to the Operating Systems entries and ensure that they are associated with the correct templates.

**Note**: A modification to the Ubuntu Default disk partition needs to be made to that a user prompt is avoided. To do this navigate to ‘Partition Tables’, select the ‘Ubuntu default’ and then add the following as a replacement:

[gist id=2888536]

8. **Host Group**

You can think of a Host Group as a profile or policy that is applied to a new host or group of hosts that is/are provisioned. Here selected puppet modules can be enforced on associated hosts to the Host Group. An example Host Group would be, say, an OpenStack Compute (Nova) Host Group. Any host associated with this group would assume the role of providing virtual machines for an OpenStack installation.

With the above items created you are now ready to create a Foreman/puppet managed node! Click on ‘Hosts’ and ‘New Host’. Most parameters will be pre-populated. The only parameter you need to supply is the new host’s MAC address.

### Potential Issues

1. If you come across this DNS related issue when creating a node:

[gist id=2888540]

First check the permissions of your `/etc/bind/rndc.key`. The foreman process needs to have read permissions to this. This is best done by adding the `foreman-proxy` user to the `bind` group (Thanks to Andreas N for [the suggestion](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/foreman-users/TzmrYhoFKFI)!). E.g. on Ubuntu:

[gist id=2888549]

Secondly, a work around, although not elegant, is to disable the dynamic DNS functionality. To do this:

1. Go to ‘Domains’ and clear the value for ‘Dns’ and then save.
2. Edit `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman_proxy/manifests/params.pp` and set `$dns = false`.

2. If when provisioning a new host and the PXE boot process complains that it cannot download the pre-configuration file (say in the case of Ubuntu) and the URL is malformed (e.g. http://foreman:3000.mydomain.net), then ensure that you are accessing the Foreman front-end via the fully qualified hostname (e.g. http://foreman.mydomain.net:3000) and not just the host name (e.g. http://foreman:3000).

3. If you come across the following issue when creating a node:

[gist id=2888551]

The first solution is to [apply the changes that are present in this diff](http://theforeman.org/projects/foreman/repository/revisions/a7ad2c1c5e128347fea66478614d8784b222c2d9) that fixes [Foreman issue 1541](http://theforeman.org/issues/1451).
The last resort work around is to install the 0.5 `nightly` release of Foreman. You can select what release of Foreman to install by editing `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman/manifests/params.pp` and changing `$package_source`. 0.5 appears to be relatively stable with many [people in the Foreman IRC room](http://theforeman.org/projects/foreman/wiki/Support) using it.

## Integrating Physical Nodes with Foreman & Puppet
For Foreman to use puppet, puppet needs to send reports to Foreman. To do this a script is registered with puppet. Thankfully this is looked after by the previous install steps above. If you want to check the script out, it can be [found at the Foreman repository](https://github.com/theforeman/puppet-foreman/blob/master/templates/foreman-report.rb.erb) or just look in `/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/puppet/reports/foreman.rb`. The other step that the install looks after is registering the report with puppet via the puppet configuration file (`/etc/puppet/puppet.conf`).

At this stage you should have Foreman up and running and acting as not just a puppet master but as an ENC (External Node Classifier). This is looked after (this setup is automated) by yet another simple script (`/etc/puppet/node.rb`) that is registered with puppet. This script supplies node information from Puppet to Foreman.

## Possible Issues on Provisioned Nodes

1. If you are seeing **”hostname was not match with the server certificate”** in `/var/log/syslog` on your provisioned host then [please see this page](http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/troubleshooting.html). Normally you need to adjust the `server` parameter in the `/etc/puppet/puppet.conf` file.
2. If you see **”Error 400 on SERVER: Could not find node…”** in `/var/log/syslog` then you will likely have to adjust the variable `url` in `/etc/puppet/node.rb` and `$foreman_url` in `/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/puppet/reports/foreman.rb`.
3. If you see:

[gist id=2888556]

then check out [this article on disabling factsync](http://serverfault.com/questions/66124/puppet-0-25-0-problems-with-access-control-how-can-i-fix-them).

## Next up
The next post in this series will look into deploying OpenStack using puppet in a distributed (multiple nodes scenario) and then followed up with integration with Foreman. Stay tuned!

FuturICT – FET Flagship

26. June 2012 / / 0 Comments

Today, we know more about the universe than about our society. It’s time to use the power of information to explore social and economic life on Earth and discover options for a sustainable future. Together, we can manage the challenges of the 21st century, combining the best of all knowledge.

The ultimate goal of the FuturICT flagship project is to understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies probably constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century and is equally important for the development of novel robust, trustworthy and adaptive information and communication technologies (ICT), based on socially inspired paradigms.

We think that integrating ICT, Complexity Science and the Social Sciences will create a paradigm shift, facilitating a symbiotic co-evolution of ICT and society. Data from our complex globe-spanning ICT system will be leveraged to develop models of techno-socio-economic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inform the development of a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems.

Data from our complex globe-spanning ICT system will be leveraged to develop models of techno-socio-economic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inform the development of a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems.

FuturICT as a whole will act as a Knowledge Accelerator, turning massive data into knowledge and technological progress. The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator is a previously unseen multidisciplinary international scientific endeavour with focus on techno-socio-economic-environmental systems.

 

In this way, FuturICT will create the scientific methods and ICT platforms needed to address planetary-scale challenges and opportunities in the 21st century. Specifically, FuturICT will build a sophisticated simulation, visualization and participation platform, called the Living Earth Platform. This platform will power Exploratories, to detect and mitigate crises, and Participatory Platforms, to support the decision-making of policy-makers, business people and citizens, and to facilitate a better social, economic and political participation.

sictclx.jpg

Download:  FuturICT Project Summary  Download:  FuturICT Project Outline

The FuturICT Proposal

With our knowledge of the universe, we have sent men to the moon. We know microscopic details of objects around us and within us. And yet we know relatively little about how our society works and how it reacts to changes brought upon it. Humankind is now facing serious crises for which we must develop new ways to tackle the global challenges of humanity in the 21st century. With connectivity between people rapidly increasing, we are now able to exploit information and communication technologies to achieve major breakthroughs that go beyond the step-wise improvements in other areas.It is thus timely to create an ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Flagship to explore social life on Earth, and everything it relates to, in the same way that we have spent the last century or more understanding our physical world. This proposal sketches out visionary scientific endeavours, forming an ambitious concept that allows us to answer a whole range of challenging questions. Integrating the European engineering, natural, and social science communities, this proposal will release a huge potential.The need of a socio-economic knowledge collider was first pointed out in the OECD Global Science Forum on Applications of Complexity Science for Public Policy in Erice from October 5 to 7, 2008. Since then, many scientists have called for a large-scale ICT-based research initiative on techno-social-economic-environmental issues, sometimes phrased as a Manhattan-, Apollo-, or CERN-like project to study the way our living planet works in a social dimension. Due to the connotations, we use the term knowledge accelerator, here. An organizational concept for the establishment of a knowledge accelerator is currently being sketched within the EU Support Action VISIONEER, see www.visioneer.ethz.ch. The EU Flagship initiative is exactly the right instrument to materialize this concept and thereby tackle the global challenges for mankind in the 21st century.Download:  FuturICT Project Summary,   FuturICT Project Outline,  FuturICT Project Impact,  Living Earth Simulator Platform,  Global Participatory Platform,  Planetary Nervous System Platform,  Innovation Accelerator Platform

Who’s Involved

The FuturICT flagship proposal intends to unify hundreds of the best scientists in Europe in a 10 year 1 billion EUR program to explore social life on earth and everything it relates to. The FuturICT flagship proposal will produce historic breakthroughs and provide powerful new ways to manage challenges that make the modern world so difficult to predict, including the financial crisis.

  • Academic Institutions
  • Research Centers and other Scientific Organizations
  • Supercomputing Centers
  • Business and Industrial Partners
  • Notable Individuals
  • Arts Centers
  • Government Agencies
  • Political Organizations
The full list of involved and associated organisations can be found on the FuturICT website “Who is involved“.

Supporters and Institutions

To be officially listed as a supporter of the initiative, organisations may fill in the registration form to provide FuturICT with information on scientific background, institutional association, approaches in work and contact information. Only your name and institutional association will be shown on the supporters page.

National FuturICT Hubs

Progress is also being made in coordinating national efforts across the EU towards launching the FuturICT project.

Gerold Baudinot

25. June 2012 / / 1 Comment

Gerold Baudinot is Professor ZFH, head of InIT and lead of the Service Engineering focus area within ZHAW’s  InIT Institute of applied Information Technology.
Within ZHAW he lectures on Information Engineering and Service Engineering.
His main research, expertise and teaching interests include business intelligence and service engineering.

As well as creating a leading swiss SME providing personalized portals to large swiss and international corporations, he has held many high ranking corporate positions in companies such as Conexus, CGI,  Logical CH, SAS, UBS and he  work for many years as Developper for large software vendors such as CA and ADR.

Networks and Organisations:

  • Boardmember and founder of Swiss Institute of Service Science (CTI Consortium) (NTN in Aproval)
  • Member of /ch/open
  • Member of eZurich
  • Member of ZLI

Continue reading

ICCLab Research Group Activity

25. June 2012 / / 0 Comments

Big data is a general term that might be petabyte (10^15 Byte), Exabyte (10^18 byte) or zettabyte (10^21 byte) large and consisting of billions to trillions or quadrillions of records.

Big data can be described as

  • Large volume amount of data a specific company produces ,
  • A data which requires too much time and cost for analysis,
  • A data that takes too much time to load into a relational database,
  • A data that is beyond the limit of processing capacity of specific database system and so on.

Due to the rapid growth of the data volumes, dealing with big data might lead you to the difficulties of being able to store, create, manipulate and manage your data. Generally big data is a problem in business analytics because of the large volume of data storage, process time and cost.

Goal of ICCLab research group

Most of the time big data is related with cloud computing because of the storage plus management and analysis of big data. Big dataset requires a framework like MapReduce to distribute the work among different computers.

Our aim is to solve challenges on storing, accessing and analyzing big data using the infrastructure of Cloud Computing with Hadoop and analytic packages such as SAS and R. Our infrastructure is not only for storing but also big data analytics is a challenge which needs attention!

The benefit of having big data; Even though it has some difficulties to work with big data, it helps to extract more information which could help for further researches.  Having big data allow research groups to have variety of research areas or it enable them to analyze the data in different aspects/dimension. Furthermore, big data can provide more detailed results for better decision making.

Why Hadoop

Now a days people started to put their data into Hadoop because

  • It is an open source storage,
  • Inexpensive and
  • Helps to save more data than before.

Hadoop supports around 4000 of nodes with 4TB of hard disk capacity per node which is a large amount of volume and it’s easily possible to add and remove servers into a Hadoop cluster. Beyond that it can be used without propriety licensing fees.

And it is possible to integrate high performance parallel data processing using MapReduce.

Analytics Lab

Since we are research group, we don’t want to just have big data stored in an organized way; we also need to analyze the data.

Three important points of why we choose SAS:

  • Using the new version of SAS DI studio it is easy to access stored files in Hadoop without too many extra steps; we can use infile statement of SAS language to read and write files to and from Hadoop.
  • It is possible to work with Hadoop hive tables as if they are SAS datasets, so that we can work with any jobs in SAS DI studio using Hive tables.
  • Using SAS Base it is also possible to use the functionality of Hadoop like MapReduce programming, HDFS command execution and pig

Moreover there is upcoming plan; instead of accessing the data from Hadoop for processing in SAS, it is possible to take the advantage of the cluster by sending down the work to Hadoop cluster to be processed since the data is in the cluster. Interesting!

Automating The ICCLab: Part One

21. June 2012 / / 11 Comments

***Note:*** There are updated installation instructions for the new release of Foreman 1.0.x [in a complementing blog post](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/2012/09/installing-foreman-1-0-1/).

## Introduction
In the world of data centres, automation is not a nice-to-have it’s essential. Sure you could attempt some manual deployment and configuration if you’ve 2 machines to administrate or knock together a custom script in Perl or python if you’ve 30 machines. But what happens when this grows to thousands? This is where the likes of [Puppet](http://puppetlabs.com/), [Chef](http://www.opscode.com/chef/) and [CFEngine](http://cfengine.com/) come into play. These are the tools for managing deployment of cloud-scale data centres.

One of our current requirements here in the [ICCLab](http://www.cloudcomp.ch) is to design and implement scalable infrastructure automation. To do this we have some basic and simple requirements:

1. Toolset must be easy to use, extensible and have a minimal learning curve,
2. Toolset must allow for the deployment of software and the lifecycle management of that software,
3. Toolset must allow the provisioning of physical machines,
4. Toolset must be fully integrated.

Based on these requirements we have selected [Puppet](http://puppetlabs.com/) as the core of this toolset. [Puppet](http://puppetlabs.com/) will satisfy the first two requirements. To satisfy the third and in doing so the fourth, [Foreman](http://theforeman.org) will be selected as the means to provision physical servers.

Foreman is integrated with Puppet. It runs a puppetmaster server which once a physical server is provisioned, will deploy specified [Puppet modules](http://forge.puppetlabs.com/). Foreman itself has a user web front-end that talks to a backend service known as a smart proxy. The smart proxy provides a service that provides DHCP, DNS, Puppet, Puppet CA, and TFTP functionality. As well as the user web front-end Foreman also [has a useful web API](http://theforeman.org/wiki/foreman/API).

## Getting Started
To get started with Puppet and Foreman, we’re setting things up on a VM ([you can download it if you like](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ForemanV.ova), user:fman password:fman) for flexibility. You can of course deploy Foreman to a physical machine but choosing a VM is solely to ease this walkthrough. To do this you can follow the following steps.

***Assumption***: An [Ubuntu 11.04 Server OS](http://releases.ubuntu.com/11.04/) running on [VirtualBox](http://virtualbox.org). Currently [there are issues with 12.04](http://theforeman.org/issues/1481) and Foreman that are related to DB schema migration.

### Foreman Virtual Machine Setup
Assign 2 NICs: one NAT’ed the other on a host-only network. The NAT’ed adapter will act as the public interface through which access to the internet is supplied. The host-only adapter will act as the private internal network in concertation with VirtualBox’s virtual switch (default name `vboxnet0`). The virtual switch `vboxnet0` is set with an IP address of `192.168.56.1` and mask of `255.255.255.0`. DHCP is disabled.

Install a Linux variant, in this case Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”, on to the virtual machine. During the install process choose to install the `openssh-server` so you can `ssh` into the virtual machine.

**Tip**: Most of these commands will require root privileges, so to save typing `sudo $COMMAND` run in interactive `sudo` mode:

[gist id=2888371]

Once the machine has booted update the VM’s packages to the latest:

[gist id=2888373]

During the install, the NAT’ed adapter will be setup. In order to complete the setup you will have to setup the host-only adapter also. To do this edit `/etc/network/interfaces`. The `metric` parameter is important here. Below is an example of how you can setup the host-only adapter, named `eth1`.

[gist id=2888052]

We need to allow traffic to pass to and from (packet forwarding) the host-only and NAT’ed adapters (`eth1` and `eth0`). To do this IP forwarding needs to be enabled:

[gist id=2888334]

You will need to setup iptables rules. In order to persist these rules over reboots, setup the following script:

[gist id=2888339]

Save this as `/etc/init.d/fwd-traff.sh`, make it executable and then set it to start on boot:

[gist id=2888354]

You should now execute the script this script in the case you do not reboot the node at this point.

You should setup your domain settings. By default in this setup, nameserver and domain settings are automatically managed by `resolvconf`. As puppet, hence Foreman, relies on the fully qualified host name of nodes its installed on, you should, if not using other means, configure `resolvconf` so that it does not overwrite your domain and nameserver settings. To do this edit `/etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head` and place the following content (here we’re using the google DNS resolver but you might want to use something else):

[gist id=2987340]

Otherwise you can edit `/etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf` and set the following:

[gist id=2987954]

Time synchronisation is important, especially for puppet (time drift and certificates do not mix well! ;-)). To look after this install `ntp`

[gist id=2987348]

Finally setup a port forwarding rule on the NAT’ed adapter (`eth0`) to the SSH service running on `eth1` in VirtualBox so that as a convenience you can ssh to the Foreman node using your own client and not the VM console.

### Installing Foreman
The most appropriate means to deploy foreman is of course via puppet! First install the necessary `git`.

[gist id=2888377]

Now install [puppet from puppetlabs.com](http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/puppetlabs_package_repositories.html#for-debian-and-ubuntu). This is done as we need the latest version, 2.7.x. In version 2.6.x, the default in Ubuntu 11.04, there is an Augeas bug that makes Foreman installation tricky.

[gist id=2888381]

You should also disable `puppetmaster` from `/etc/defaults/puppetmaster` as this will effect how apache executes.

[gist id=2988152]

Now, get Foreman. You should place this collection of puppet modules in the place where you store all you modules (e.g. `/etc/puppet/modules`). For this installation we’ve placed them in `/etc/puppet/modules/common`. Of course, you being a DevOps nut, you want to have all of these configurations under SCM (e.g. git, mercurial or subversion).

[gist id=2888384]

You will also need a DHCP, a DNS and the Concat module. The following modules do the job perfectly:

– [DHCP Module](https://github.com/GregSutcliffe/puppet-dhcp)

git clone git://github.com/GregSutcliffe/puppet-dhcp.git dhcp

– [DNS Module](https://github.com/GregSutcliffe/puppet-dns)

git clone git://github.com/GregSutcliffe/puppet-dns.git dns

– [Concat Module](https://github.com/GregSutcliffe/puppet-concat)

git clone git://github.com/GregSutcliffe/puppet-concat.git concat

***Note:*** As we’re installing onto Ubuntu, a Debian variant, there maybe some gotchas you need to read up on. See [README.debian](https://github.com/theforeman/foreman-installer/blob/master/README.debian).

You now have all the necessary Foreman modules. A quick directory listing should show the following:

[gist id=2888400]
***Foreman 0.4.2 only***: In the current Foreman installer there is a minor bug in `/etc/puppet/modules/common/tftp/manifests/install.pp`. To remedy this run the following `sed` script:

[gist id=2888404]

***Foreman 0.4.2 only***: You will also have to make the following addition in `/etc/puppet/modules/common/tftp/manifests/params.pp`:

[gist id=2888406]

Now, customise `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman_proxy/manifests/params.pp`. For this installation, change the following TFTP, DHCP and DNS variables as:

[gist id=2888416]

Also review the settings in `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman/manifests/params.pp`.

If you intend on running a DNS server for the subnet and wish to forward the DNS requests upstream to another DNS server then you will need to modify the DNS module file `/etc/puppet/modules/common/dns/templates/options.conf.erb` and insert the following `forwarders` clause to add the Google (8.8.8.*) and OpenDNS (208.67.222.*) upstream servers:

[gist id=2888418]

If you’re foreman does not have a domain name associated with it then you can quick supply one by adding a `domain` statement in `/etc/resolv.conf` (e.g. `domain mydomain.net`).
Also as you are using Foreman’s managed DNS server, you should make a new `nameserver` entry in `/etc/resolv.conf` that points to the DNS server’s IP address.

**Tip**: At this stage you can make a snapshot of the VM before installing Foreman so you can revert to it if your install does not work out.

Now it’s time to let puppet do the work! Execute the following:

[gist id=2888421]

Enable the foreman service:

[gist id=2888423]

Now start the Foreman server by executing:

[gist id=2888426]

Foreman will now be available on its URL serving from port 3000. Finally commit and optionally push your modified modules to your SCM repository. If you ever want to setup Foreman again on a fresh machine all you’ll now ever need to do is to install puppet, check out foreman from your repository and apply the relevant modules.

#### Possible Installation Issues

If you experience issues on executing this command and you want more information, simply add the flags `-v -d` to the `puppet` command.

1. You might see the error:

[gist id=2888441]

You can safely ignore this but if you want to remove the error it simply create the directory.

2. If you encounter an error telling you that “no fqdn” is available to `facter` then [see this useful article](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7780322/puppet-facter-could-not-retrieve-fact-fqdn-how-to-fix-or-circumvent) on how to resolve the issue.

3. ***Foreman 0.4.2 only***: If you get the following error output:

[gist id=2888442]

or

[gist id=2988063]

then your issue lies with Foreman and a specific issue with Augeas attempting to add certain `sudoers` permissions for Foreman and persist them. To resolve this you will need to comment out the `augeas` entry in `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman_proxy/manifests/config.pp` and add the following entry:

[gist id=2888445]

The contents of the template (located at : `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman_proxy/templates/foreman.erb`) should be:

[gist id=2888449]

**Note**: With each change(s) reapply the foreman puppet command as above.

#### Customising Foreman
There are a number of customisations that you might want to make. Don’t edit the Foreman configuration files directly. Edit the `param.pp` files and then use `puppet apply`.

1. Enable Foreman front-end authentication:

In `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman/manifests/params.pp`
change:
`$authentication = false`
to:
`$authentication = true`

2. In a trusted environment and for troubleshooting, disable SSL:

In `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman/manifests/params.pp`
change:
`$ssl = true`
to:
`$ssl = false`

3. By default Foreman uses your fully qualified domain name. If you do not want this and say just the hostname then:

In `/etc/puppet/modules/common/foreman/manifests/params.pp`
change:
`$foreman_url = “http://${::fqdn}”`
to:
`$foreman_url = “http://${::hostname}”`

4. By default Foreman uses a sqlite3 backend. You can change this. See [the following Foreman article](http://theforeman.org/projects/foreman/wiki/Database_configuration).

If you apply such changes make sure to re-run the foreman puppet command (as above):

[gist id=2888421]

## Next up
Things are hotting up in the area of automation. Just recently EMC announced their new [open source provisioning framework, Razor](https://github.com/puppetlabs/Razor), built on Puppet. There is also [support added within Foreman](http://cloudprovisioning.wordpress.com/) for provisioning VMs via oVirt and Amazon EC2.

Big thanks goes out to [all those that supplied suggestions](https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/foreman-users/-ASnNeC5SyE) to improve this guide!

In the next blog post we’ll look at configuring and provisioning bare metal hosts with Foreman. Stay tuned!

ICCLab Presented at /ch/open

19. June 2012 / / 1 Comment

The ICCLab team presented gave a live demo of [our OpenStack cluster](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/2012/06/whats-powering-the-icclab/) at the [/ch/open Open Cloud Day](http://www.ch-open.ch/index.php?id=1034). It was an excellent day with many view points from governmental all the way down to Infrastructure as a Service and automation. We also announced the [Swiss OpenStack User Group](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/openstack-user-group/) and we’re looking forward to the inaugural event.

This event is particularly important given that Cloud Computing is as ever becoming more and more important. To get the full power of clouds, in the view of /ch/open and the ICCLab, these clouds should be open according to the  open cloud initiative principles. The goal is to foster open clouds and interoperability of clouds. Especially taking into account the requirements of public administrations.

**Title:** The OpenStack Cloud Computing Framework and Eco-System

**Authors:** [Thomas M. Bohnert](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/team/thomas-michael-bohnert/), [Andy Edmonds](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/team/andy-edmonds/), [Christof Marti](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/team/christof-marti/), [Fabrice Mannhart](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/team/fabrice-manhart/)

**[Presentation link](http://blog.zhaw.ch/icclab/files/2012/06/2012-06-OpenStack-CloudDays-Bern-fin-fin.pdf)**

**Abstract:**

OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

The InIT Cloud Computing Lab (ICCLab) of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences is researching the full cloud computing stack. Much of this work happens in the context of the OpenStack framework and the ICCLab is official coordinator of the “OpenStack Community Switzerland”.

In this talk we’ll present evolution, objectives, scope, and status of the the OpenStack project. Attendees will be briefed from an technological and eco-system perspective, thus learning what defines Cloud Computing, how OpenStack implements Cloud Computing, and how to engage with the OpenStack community. The talk will close with a short overview of research activities and services provided by the ICClab.

OpenStack User Group

18. June 2012 / / 0 Comments

The ICCLab is a huge fan of the OpenStack IaaS framework. We’re more than happy to promote the use of it and education about it in Switzerland. We will be running regular OpenStack user group meet-ups for anyone with an interest in IaaS and PaaS to come along learn, participate and hopefully have some fun too!

For more additional information about OpenStack User Groups see the official OpenStack website (Swiss OpenStack User Group)

Subscribe to the meetup group for more information.

You can also get announcements through the @OpenStackCH twitter account.

If you would like to help out, participate or just have a general question, contact us! (or ping @dizz, @tmbohnert , @ICC_Lab or @pra_amr)

Updated OCCI OpenStack Install Guide

12. June 2012 / / 0 Comments

Recently, the [OCCI implementation](http://www.github.com/dizz/nova) for [OpenStack](http://www.openstack.org) was made available by [work done by Intel Labs Europe](http://wiki.openstack.org/occi) as part of the [FI-ware project](http://www.fi-ware.eu). Some of the install instructions are now somewhat out of date. In this post we’ll outline the steps necessary to get the OCCI implementation up and running. This updated install guide is also now reflected on the [OpenStack OCCI wiki](http://wiki.openstack.org/occi). A big thanks goes out to Piotr Kasprzak at [GDWG](http://www.gwdg.de) for some of the updates!

# Steps

Create a fresh VM. Ubuntu 12.04 is a good baseline.

Get devstack:

[gist id=2917429]

Install some necessaries:

[gist id=2917431]

Fix the `prettytable` issue:

[gist id=2917434]

Edit `~/devstack/stackrc` so it checks out the OCCI branch of OpenStack:

[gist id=2917441]

Create/Edit `~/devstack/localrc` with the following content:

[gist id=2917445]

Now execute devstack:

[gist id=2917453]

You will be now asked for a number of service admin passwords. Once the devstack process has completed you should see the following:

[gist id=2917462]

Once the stack is running you can then issue the commands that are on the [OpenStack OCCI wiki page](http://wiki.openstack.org/occi).

A virtual machine with both OpenStack and OCCI can be [downloaded from here](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/OCCI-OS.ova). The user name and password is `occi` and `occi`. It is in an OVA export format and you can easily import into VirtualBox. In `~/devstack/localrc` the `OFFLINE` parameter is set to `True`. If you want to update the devstack installation change this to `False`.

## Potential Issues

1. If the OCCI API blocks and does not return a response then please check your `/etc/nova/api-paste.ini` configuration. Ensure that the `[filter:authtoken]` section has the correct `service_host` and `auth_host` values.

OCCI and ICCLab

12. June 2012 / / 1 Comment

We here in the ICCLab are very much interested in all activities related to standardisation in the Cloud. Standardisation forms part of our [overall strategy in bringing impact](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/research/) to the communities we take part in. One of these activities is our participation in the [Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI)](http://occi-wg.org/). OCCI is a standardisation activity ran out of the [Open Grid Forum](http://www.ogf.org). Briefly OCCI is:

> a Protocol and API for all kinds of Management tasks. OCCI was originally initiated to create a remote management API for IaaS model based Services, allowing for the development of interoperable tools for common tasks including deployment, autonomic scaling and monitoring. It has since evolved into a flexible API with a strong focus on integration, portability, interoperability and innovation while still offering a high degree of extensibility. The current release of the Open Cloud Computing Interface is suitable to serve many other models in addition to IaaS, including e.g. PaaS and SaaS.

Apart from contributing to the OCCI specifications, the ICCLab is contributing to the OCCI implementation for OpenStack and it is with this implementation that we take part in the various [Cloud Plugfest](http://www.cloudplugfest.org/) events, which “*is a co-operative community project designed to promote interoperability efforts on cloud-based software, frameworks, and standards among vendors, products, projects and implementations*”.

ICCLab Research

12. June 2012 / / 2 Comments

The InIT Cloud Computing Lab adopts a comprehensive and holistic approach to science . The entire approach is based on three driving principles, namely **Scientific Foundation**, **Strategic Impact**, and **Knowledge Transfer**. The entire scientific work of the ICCLab is aligned and directed along these inter-linked dimensions.

[Read more about the ICCLab’s approach to research and education](http://www.cloudcomp.ch/research/).

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