[14:56] <mars__> are we starting in a few minutes now?
[14:56] <kim0> indeed
[14:59] <nijaba> o/
[15:00] <zul> hi
[15:00] <lckarssen> hi
[15:00] <kim0> Hello everyone
[15:01] <kim0> Welcome to the very first Ubuntu Cloud Community Q+A session
[15:01] <kim0> It's very exciting to get in touch with all of you,
[15:01] <kim0> can everyone wave please
[15:02] <kim0> o/
[15:02] <notgary> o/
[15:02] <nijaba> o/
[15:02] <dendrobates> o/
[15:02] <lckarssen> o/
[15:02] <kim0> awesome
[15:03] <kim0> Any of you already using Ubuntu in a cloud context
[15:03] <kim0> can you share your experience .. your setup .. and your questions
[15:04]  * nijaba assumes you exclude openstack and canonical people?
[15:04] <kim0> yeah :)
[15:04] <kim0> unless there is something interesting you would still like to share
[15:04] <kim0> why not
[15:05] <kim0> Any questions or comments .. time to shoot
[15:06] <kim0> dendrobates: notgary lckarssen you guys already played with Ubuntu in any cloud context ?
[15:06] <nijaba> kim0: dendrobates = openstack
[15:06] <kim0> ah
[15:07] <lckarssen> nope, not yet.
[15:07] <kim0> lckarssen: what interests you ? what would you like more info about
[15:08] <notgary> I'm looking into setting up an Ubuntu server and am currently looking into the feature available. Is it possible to set up my own Ubuntu One cloud to which I can connect the U! client on my desktop?
[15:08] <dendrobates> yes I have:)
[15:08] <zul> dendrobates: i would hope so :)
[15:08] <lckarssen> We are working in life sciences and we're looking whether it is feasable to move to the cloud for our high throughput calculations. But as start we'd like to play around with a webserver first :-)
[15:09] <kim0> notgary: hmm, not quite sure, but as far as I know .. not all of Ubuntu-One is open-source
[15:09] <nijaba> lckarssen: to a public or a private cloud?
[15:09] <kim0> notgary: you maybe able to setup cloud storage using sparkle share among other solutions
[15:09] <nijaba> notgary: quite sure you cannot, unfortunately
[15:10] <lckarssen> for the test webserver we're probably going to use Amazon's free tier.
[15:10] <kim0> lckarssen: life science calculations sound like a pretty reasonable workload to offload to a cloud
[15:10] <lckarssen> For the high throughput stuff Amazon's HPC offerings look nice, but our national compute center is also working on a cloud service
[15:10] <kim0> lckarssen: assuming it's bursty
[15:11] <kim0> lckarssen: so if you would like to play with Amazon's free tier .. and it's your first time
[15:11] <lckarssen> indeed, it is bursty. Right now we've only got one server of our own and work on a national cluster. But with new data coming up we need to scale up as well.
[15:11] <kim0> lckarssen: check out this guide I've written foss-boss.blogspot.com/2010/10/pointnclick-guide-to-running-ubuntu-in.html
[15:12] <nijaba> lckarssen: that's will not give you much of an appreciation for the high throughput, though
[15:12] <lckarssen> kim0: thanks!
[15:12] <kim0> welcome
[15:12] <lckarssen> No, that's true. But before working on that we want to wait until our national HPC center has finished it's tests (of its own cloud). Then we can compare.
[15:13] <kim0> lckarssen: I think running an internal cloud that can burst to ec2 as needed would make sense ..
[15:13] <lckarssen> A problem there is probably network bandwisth.
[15:13] <lckarssen> Or we would have to store all data both locally and in the cloud.
[15:14] <kim0> I think you can ship disks to ec2
[15:15] <kim0> lckarssen: just interested how large is your dataset
[15:15] <lckarssen> Right now we're talking about about 5TB of shared data and about 3TB of user files (/home))
[15:16] <lckarssen> Before the end of the year we will be looking at about 6TB of shared data.
[15:16] <lckarssen> I've caculated that 20TB EBS space would be kind of pricy, but we would pay only for what is acutally used of course.
[15:17] <kim0> unless you store it there permenantly and keep syncing it up
[15:17] <lckarssen> Another issue is privacy. I still have to see whether our data is sufficently anonymised for us to be able to send it out of the country (another reason why our national compute center would be a handy place)
[15:18] <lckarssen> What would you suggest as management software for say 2-4 cloud instances? puppet? cfengine?
[15:19] <kim0> lckarssen: what are you currently using to launch the instances
[15:19] <lckarssen> nothing yet :-)
[15:20] <kim0> hehe
[15:20] <lckarssen> I'd probably go for the command line tools in ubuntu's ec2
[15:20] <kim0> ok basically .. to launch the instances .. yeah you can either use the graphical console or the cli tools
[15:20] <kim0> lckarssen: for basic customizations as the instance boots
[15:20] <kim0> you can use cloud-init
[15:21] <kim0> an ubuntu specific technology that helps bootstrap the instance as it boots
[15:21] <kim0> and gives it a "personality"
[15:21] <lckarssen> ah, great.
[15:21] <kim0> once the system is up
[15:22] <lckarssen> (reading the cloud-init wiki page now)
[15:22] <kim0> puppet, chef are good choices for config management
[15:22] <kim0> other options would be bcfg2 and cfengine
[15:22] <kim0> vadi2: hey
[15:22] <kim0> vadi2: Welcome :)
[15:23] <vadi2> hi. I'd like to ask, just started on all of this yesterday - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2StartersGuide says "And, of course, you're being billed as long the host is running" - does that mean as long as the instance is not stopped? There seem to be two options - to either stop or terminate them, and I'm not sure which one would keep billing you.
[15:23] <kim0> lckarssen: also landscape might be a good instance management tool since it manages the ubuntu guests as well (more unified). Might want to consider it
[15:24] <vadi2> If compared to vms, is terminate = shutdown vm, stop = pause vm?
[15:24] <lckarssen> kim0: Yeah, I'll definitely take a look at it. Read good things about ut
[15:25] <kim0> vadi2: EC2 offers 2 instance types
[15:25] <kim0> vadi2: instance store and ebs
[15:25] <kim0> for "ebs" instances .. once they're stopped ..
[15:26] <kim0> the machines still presist .. so .. they still consume storage and thus you are still paying for them
[15:26] <kim0> to stop paying for them .. you need to "terminate" them .. i.e. completely erase them
[15:26] <vadi2> okay
[15:26] <lckarssen> kim0: For the deployment of our HPC cloud instances, I'd like to create my own disk images (with all our software pre-installed). Could I prepare these images with vmbuilder, like i do for KVM VMs?
[15:27] <kim0> lckarssen: indeed you can
[15:27] <kim0> lckarssen: I can try to locate you some instructions ..
[15:27] <lckarssen> kim0: great :-)
[15:27]  * kim0 sifts thru emails :)
[15:28] <nijaba> lckarssen: in fact, you can even test them with kvm before uploading them
[15:28] <nijaba> lckarssen: smoser or kirkland have a post on that
[15:28] <lckarssen> That's even better!
[15:28]  * nijaba searches on cloud.ubuntu.com
[15:29] <lckarssen> I've found a discussion on the cloud mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cloud/2010-November/000400.html
[15:29] <smoser> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEC/Images discusses booting ours on kvm
[15:29] <kim0> lckarssen: might be interesting on publishing images https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEC/Images/Publishing
[15:29] <smoser> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEC/Images/Publishing discusses how ours are built
[15:29] <smoser> i have to leave
[15:29] <kim0> thanks Scott
[15:30] <lckarssen> smoser: thanks
[15:30] <kim0> lckarssen: if the amount of tools to be installed is not large .. and is updated frequently
[15:30] <kim0> lckarssen: it may even make sense to start a prestine image and auto install everything with cloud-init or a similar technology
[15:32] <lckarssen> I'll play around with that option as well. with things like the gridengine packages that might even be easier (using puppet or the likes for per-machine configuration)
[15:32] <vadi2> Silly question, but I can't find the page where aws would show me my current bill. I'm just starting out in this (using the 15gb ubuntu image, because instructions for 10gb didn't work) and would rather not work anything huge up by accident.
[15:33] <lckarssen> vadi2: I'd be interested in that as well :-)
[15:33] <kim0> hehe
[15:34] <kim0> Visit https://aws-portal.amazon.com/
[15:34] <kim0> login ..
[15:34] <kim0> click "Account" on the main navigation bar
[15:34] <kim0> then "Usage reports"
[15:34] <kim0> and continue
[15:34] <kim0> actually "Account Activity" is easier to consume
[15:34] <vadi2> ah thanks. definitely not something intuitive
[15:34] <lckarssen> kim0: thanks
[15:35] <kim0> usage reports is much more detailed
[15:35] <kim0> cool
[15:36] <kim0> Great .. If you guys have any other questions .. feel free to use
[15:36] <kim0> the Ubuntu cloud forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=392
[15:36] <kim0> This IRC channel
[15:37] <kim0> the ubuntu-cloud mailing list : https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-cloud
[15:37] <kim0> If any of you would like to contribute to Ubuntu cloud or has done something cool around it .. please do let me know (kim0 AT ubuntu.com)
[15:38] <vadi2> cool, thanks much
[15:38] <vadi2> oh, is a 10gb instance planned?
[15:38] <lckarssen> thanks kim0
[15:38] <kim0> vadi2: um, I think for natty it is
[15:39] <kim0> vadi2: smoser would be able to confirm
[15:40] <lckarssen> Another question: if you are running an instance in the cloud, could you configure it in such a way that if the load (or some other performance metric) is too high for, say 5 minutes, a second instance is automatically started?
[15:41] <kim0> lckarssen: yep
[15:41] <kim0> lckarssen: you're talking about amazon ec2 ?
[15:41] <lckarssen> kim0: yes (at the moment)
[15:41] <kim0> lckarssen: http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/
[15:41] <hermes> kim0: I think I spoke to personally thru the chat your earlier couple of weeks ago about doing stuff into the CLoud. But due to a major launch at my company I could not do anything into. I remember You also gave me a couple of links to start off with but unfortunately I could not do much. So I think I can buy sometime and would like to resume. How do we go about that
[15:42] <kim0> hermes: so what exactly were you interested in working on
[15:42] <lckarssen> kim0: thanks again!
[15:42] <kim0> lckarssen: most welcome :)
[15:44] <kim0> hermes: You are interested in development ?
[15:44]  * kim0 stresses his spectacular memory :)
[15:45] <hermes> kim0: yes most definitely development
[15:45] <kim0> Awesome ..
[15:45] <kim0> I can give a list of links to projects
[15:45] <kim0> relating to Ubuntu and cloud
[15:45] <kim0> and you can see what interests you
[15:45] <kim0> to start working on
[15:46] <kim0> https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-on-ec2/ubuntu-on-ec2/cloud-utils
[15:46] <hermes> kim0: I remember u telling me something about the Open-Stack and that some stuff can be done but I could not do a lot of reading at that time. B
[15:46] <hermes> alright I am on it
[15:46] <kim0> Indeed, open-stack is a very active project that you can engage in
[15:46] <kim0> I'll keep pasting some links
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/vmbuilder
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/cloud-init
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/eucalyptus
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/uec-testing-scripts
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/openstack
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/awstrial
[15:46] <kim0> https://launchpad.net/ensemble
[15:47]  * kim0 enjoys spamming the channel :)
[15:47] <kim0> hermes: feel free to engage in bug triaging and feature development in any of these projects
[15:47] <kim0> hermes: If you find any Ubuntu cloud related project that's not here, let me know as well
[15:48] <kim0> hermes: for any of those projects
[15:48] <kim0> you can visit bugs.launchpad.net
[15:48] <kim0> and blueprints.launchpad.net
[15:48] <kim0> to locate bugs that you can work on
[15:48] <kim0> and feature additions that you can start implementing
[15:48] <kim0> hermes: sounds good ?
[15:48] <hermes> kim0: ok
[15:48] <kim0> Awesome :)
[15:48] <hermes> kim0: pretty much
[15:49] <kim0> hermes: also testing UEC deployments .. reporting bugs
[15:49] <kim0> hermes: and trying to fix them is pretty cool
[15:49] <kim0> hermes: UEC is based on the eucalyptus project above
[15:50] <kim0> So .. anyone else got any question
[15:51] <hermes> kim0: Just a little more help I ll have to wrap my head a little bit on Bazaar coz its been a long time I hv been away
[15:51] <lckarssen> kim0: nope, you've given a lot of info already :-)
[15:51] <kim0> hehe lckarssen thanks
[15:51] <hermes> Could u suggest something that shall help to download the code, edit it code and then submit my changes etc
[15:52] <kim0> hermes: launchpad can help you with that
[15:52] <hermes> ok
[15:52] <kim0> hermes: so the basic workflow is
[15:52] <kim0> hermes: you "bzr branch projectX"
[15:52] <kim0> you get the source code
[15:52] <kim0> you add a feature or fix a bug
[15:52] <kim0> you bzr commit
[15:52] <kim0> "bzr push" it to your separate branch
[15:52] <kim0> then propose the branch for merge
[15:53] <kim0> If your code fixes a bug .. you can link it to the bug it fixes as well
[15:53] <kim0> hermes: bzr integrates quite nicely with launchpad, once you learn it .. it's a bliss :)
[15:53] <hermes> hmm ok that I have been using GIT so I getting the idealogy is pretty much like that
[15:54] <kim0> hermes: indeed .. both are distributed scms
[15:54] <kim0> I just like bzr more :)
[15:54] <hermes> Cool I guess with a little scanning thru I would be able to wrap my head around bzr
[15:55] <hermes> I would need to generate some Keys and also have a launchpad account I suppose
[15:55] <kim0> hermes: yeah .. you can easily register to launchpad
[15:55] <kim0> and upload your ssh keys there
[15:56] <lckarssen> hermes: I was quite impressed with the bzr user guide http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/latest/en/user-guide/index.html
[15:56] <kim0> lckarssen: thanks :)
[15:56] <hermes> lckarssen: thanks I ll look at that :-)
[15:56] <kim0> hermes: most people find bzr more user friendly than git .. at least I did hehe
[15:56] <hermes> YEs it is
[15:57] <hermes> I have used it long time back during the UBuntu Developer Week
[15:57] <hermes> I just dnt remember now, I think the user guide shud help
[15:58] <kim0> hermes: since you already played with it .. just running "bzr help command" might be helpful as a reminder
[15:58] <kim0> like, bzr help branch
[15:58] <kim0> okay, this session is coming to an end ..
[15:58] <kim0> Thanks everyone for coming by
[15:59] <kim0> Let me mention our main communication channels again
[15:59] <kim0> - the Ubuntu cloud forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=392
[15:59] <kim0> - This IRC channel
[15:59] <kim0> - the ubuntu-cloud mailing list : https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-cloud
[15:59] <kim0> If any of you would like to contribute to Ubuntu cloud or has done something cool around it .. please do let me know (kim0 AT ubuntu.com)
[15:59] <kim0> see you next week :)
[15:59] <lckarssen> kim0: Thanks again!
[16:00] <hermes> kim0: session next week?
[16:00] <kim0> lckarssen: You're welcome
[16:00] <kim0> hermes: Yep .. it is weekly
[16:00] <kim0> #Q+A session ends
[16:00]  * kim0 lurks in the channel
[16:00] <kim0> drop me a line should you still need any help
[16:01] <hermes> kim0: Sorry but when does this happen weekly, so I could make sure I dnt miss it
[16:01] <kim0> same time :)
[16:01] <kim0> 3pm UTC Wed
[16:01] <kim0> this is just the very first time
[16:02] <kim0> so you didn't really miss any session yet hehe
[16:02]  * kim0 going into a meeting
[16:17] <vadi2> kim0: min.us runs ubuntu on amazon, btw
[16:18] <vadi2> http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/e9v5c/imgur_has_some_serious_competition_introducing/c16jyxn?context=3