Overview of Aggie Cloud Services

AggieCloud Console

Sign into AggieCloud using your NetID(without @tamu.edu): https://aggie.cloud.tamu.edu

Introduction to AggieCloud

After you login, you will see the 'AggieCloud v2 - Cloud Services Console'. Under 'My Services', select the Service Broker. This will take you to the Catalog. The catalog is used to deploy and manage cloud resources, like vCenter VMs. At the top you will see an overview of your Resource usage in terms of number of VMs deployed, CPUs used, storage used (GB) and memory used (GB). Next is a list of catalog of items. Catalog items are used to provision a set of cloud resources.

The provisioned cloud resources that are created by the requested catalog item are grouped in to what is known as a deployment. The cloud resources in a deployment will include all of the provisioned virtual hardware created at the time of provisioning. Items like a VM, a virtual network, a virtual disk or even a virtual CD-ROM. All of these resources can be viewed and managed by selecting the 'Consume' tab in the Service Broker.

Provisioning a VM

1) Under Consume select 'Catalog', click 'Request' under the appropriate catalog item

2) Fill out the form

Project - If you have access to more than one project, a dropdown of projects will appear. Otherwise, the project will automatically be selected. For more information on projects see projects
Machine name - The hostname of the VM. Characters are limited to alpha lowercase (a-z), alpha uppercase (A-Z), numbers (0-9) and a - symbol. In addition, for windows deployments, there is a 15 characters maximum.
DNS Domain - A read-only field with the DNS suffix that will be used to create a DNS record for the VM. An A record and a ptr record will automatically be created in the selected network by the deployment process. By default, Linux VMs will use the DNS suffix 'ac.tamu.edu' and Windows VMs will use 'auth.tamu.edu'. For more information see DNS
Select Network - If a project has access to more than one network, a dropdown of networks will appear. Otherwise the network will automatically be selected.
Choose a Machine Size - a dropdown with target deployment sizes
SSH Key - Linux only, the Public ssh key to use to ssh with a default user with admin privileges. In single-line, openssh format for dropping in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. Do not include the final description field. Example - ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAACAQDANm6q9...m1rxtLKeHqiunw==
Use random password - Windows Only, if selected, a random password will be generated and displayed. If not selected, a field will be displayed that will allow the user to enter their own password. The password is for the local account 'tempuser', which is used for troubleshooting deployment failures. If the deployment is successful and the VM joins the domain, the account will be deleted automatically.
User-data - Optional, field for bash (Linux OSes only) or powershell (Windows OSes only) commands. The commands are added to a script which is inserted on the VM during provisioning and run at the end of the provisioning process. For Linux, the script is saved to /home/<default-user>/user-data.sh and the output is saved to /home/<default-user>/user-data.log. For Windows, the script is saved to c:\user-data.ps1 the outputs are saved to c:\user-data-err.txt and c:\user-data-out.txt.

3) Click 'Submit'

4) The window will open to the Deployments (on the left hand side under the Consume tab) where the status of the provisioning will be available. Once completed, the status will show 'Create Successful'.

To login to the newly created VM:

For Linux, SSH using the SSH key specified in the input form and the default user
For Windows, either RDP or open a remote console using your Auth Credentials

The default credentials for each Deployment are:

Operating System	Default User
Ubuntu	ubuntu
Red Hat Enterprise Linux	rhel
Windows Server	auth.tamu.edu domain credentials

Provisioning with Terraform

In Progress

Managing Deployments

Once a Deployment (and the associated cloud resources) have been deployed, they can be managed by navigating to the 'Consume' tab and selecting Deployments (on the left). All of the deployments in all of the projects that you have access to will be listed. Information such as the owner of the deployment, the project where the deployment was deployed to, creation date and pricing information will be displayed.

Select a deployment to manage and view more information. The top of the page displays some information about the deployment, including the owner, status and project. Below there are a series of tabs. The first tab is the 'Topology' tab. This tab displays the deployed cloud resources. You can view more information and perform additional actions by selecting a resource. The 'Price' tab contains information on the cost associated with the VM, while the 'Monitor' tab contains information on hardware and resource utilization for the CPU, Memory, storage nad network. Other tabs include history, user events, and alerts.

Day 2 Actions

Many Day 2 Actions can be performed on deployment resources. Navigate to Consume -> Deployments -> select the deployment. Select the topology tab and select the resource you want to manage. Most of the time, the main resource will be the 'Cloud_Machine_1', aka the VM resource. On the right of the window you will see information about the resource and an 'Actions' dropdown. This dropdown contains actions that can be performed on the resource. Some actions include:

Add Disk
Connect to Remote Console
Create Snapshot
Power Off
Reboot
Rest
Shutdown

Remote Console

To connect to the remote console of a VM:

1) Navigate to Resources -> Deployments -> select the deployment

2) Select the 'Topology' tab

3) Select the resource named 'Cloud_Machine_1'

4) On the right, select Actions -> Connect to Remote Console

5) Login using the appropriate credentials

Projects

Projects are used to group resources and provide access control. Only project members can view and manage deployments and resources in a project. Each project is associated with a specific billing code, a specific data classification and one or more networks. Projects can be created by filling out the form here.

Networking

The networks used by deployments are provisioned during project creation. Each project will have own set of one or more network segments. The networks will be in RFC1918 address space.

If public IPs or load balancing services are required, please open a ticket.

DNS

An A and PTR DNS record are created during the provisioning/deployment process. These records are created in the TAMU DNS view in Infoblox. Linux VMs use the 'ac.tamu.edu' DNS suffix and Windows VMs use the 'auth.tam.edu' DNS suffix.

A CNAME or A record with a boutique DNS name can be manually created in infoblox for the VM. If a custom PTR record is required, please open a ticket. If a custom Active Directory or auth.tamu.edu record is needed, please submit a ticket.