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RightScale Platform and Eucalyptus

RightScale Inc. announced on November 4th, 2008 support for Eucalyptus-based cloud installations. As a public demonstration of this capability, the Eucalyptus Public Cloud (EPC) can be accessed via the Eucalyptus Edition of the RightScale Platform.

Limitations

Just as the EPC itself, this demonstration is for evaluation purposes only and thus, the functionality in the Eucalyptus Edition is limited. Specifically, the use of this service is subject to the following restrictions and limitations:

  • VM instances are time-limited to 6 hours (they will be terminated without any warning!);
  • No more than 4 VM instances from one user are allowed at a time;
  • VM instances are assigned public IP addresses, but only incoming network connections and inter-instance network connections are allowed (with the exception of outgoing connections to Debian mirrors - so apt-get will work). This means that you can log in to your VMs from outside, communicate between VM instances, but are not allowed to initiate any connections from a VM instance;
  • Users are not allowed to upload custom disk images, but limited to what EPC provides (a "toy" Linux image called ttylinux, which boots almost instantaneously, and a standard Debian image that takes longer);
  • Functionality of the Eucalyptus Edition Platform is limited to:
    • managing instances (start, stop, monitor),
    • managing SSH keys,
    • connecting to instances via an SSH terminal that were started with a key created via the Platform;

  • The service offers no performance or reliability guarantees. Although we do not expect to terminate instances prematurely (before 6 hours elapse) or to lose account data, it may happen.

Signing up for the Eucalyptus Edition of RightScale

  1. To use the Eucalyptus Public Cloud through RightScale's Platform, one should first sign up for the Eucalyptus Public Cloud and obtain EPC credentials:
    • apply for an account here (your browser may warn you about a self-signed certificate, which you have to accept in order to use the service), and
    • wait for activation email message (which should take at most one business day but may happen within minutes) and log in using the link you received.

(See sections 1 and 2 of the Eucalyptus User's Guide for an illustration.)

  1. Then, one should follow the sign-up procedure on the Eucalyptus Edition of RightScale's Platform:
    • click the sign-up link (your browser may warn you about a self-signed certificate, which you have to accept in order to use the service),
    • fill out the form on the first page (the required fields are: First and Last names, Email, the two Password fields, and the Terms and conditions checkbox),
    • enter the Eucalyptus Public Cloud credentials on page three (page two is automatically skipped): Username, Query ID, and Secret Key are all displayed on your EPC credentials page (be sure to copy them exactly, without an extra spaces before or after).

If all goes well, you should be logged into RightScale's Platform after completing the above steps. EPC instances can now be managed and accessed both using the RightScale Platform and other EC2-compatible tools.

Using the Eucalyptus Edition of RightScale

There are two steps you may want to complete before attempting to start an instance:

  1. To enable Shell access through the browser, at least one SSH key must be added through RightScale's Platform (any keys that you added to EPC using other tools will appear in the Platform and can be specified when starting instances, but you won' be able to open a shell to those instances directly via the Platform).

To add a key, go to Design > Eucalyptus > SSH Keys and click the yellow Add Key button in the top right corner. You can name it as you wish. Once the key is generated, if you want to use it from outside the Platform (say, to log into your instance using ssh in a terminal), you can, at any time, cut-and-paste the Private Key contents into a file.

  1. At least one security group should be created before running instances: go to Design > Eucalyptus > Security Groups. (Otherwise, when you try to start an instance, the Platform will direct you to the Eucalyptus Security Groups page and say that A security group is required to launch an instance, please create one first.) Go ahead and create a security group, giving it some name, though the description is optional. Don't bother changing the Permissions in a created group as currently they are not fully supported.

To start an instance, go to Design > Eucalyptus > Images and click on the green play button next to any available image (currently we have a "toy" Linux image called ttylinux, which boots almost instantaneously, and a standard Debian image that takes longer). The New Instance form will be pre-filled with adequate values, so the only thing you may want to change before pressing Launch is the Nickname of the instance. If the Platform responds with There are not enough nodes to fulfill this request in the zone., then, please, try again in a little bit.

To terminate an instance, click the red stop button next to the instance either in Home > Dashboard or in Manage > Servers > Active Servers.

Thanks for trying Eucalyptus and RightScale!

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