Getting Started Using Eucalyptus (1.6)

These instructions will walk you through the essential steps for using a Eucalyptus-based cloud. Those who have worked with Amazon's EC2 system will find most of these instructions familiar (in fact, you may continue using Amazon's command-line tools with Eucalyptus).

1. Install command-line tools

The instructions below rely on the euca2ools command-line tools distributed by the Eucalyptus Team. Please, install them if you haven't done so already.

2. Sign up

Load in your browser the Web page of the Eucalyptus cloud installation that you would like to use. Ask your system administrator for the URL if you don't know it. (The URL will be of the form https://your.cloud.server:8443/, where your.cloud.server is likely to be the front-end of the cluster.)

Click the "Apply" link and fill out the form presented to you. You may not be able to use the system until the (human) administrator receives the notification of your application and approves it. The more information you supply the easier it may be for the administrator to make the decision.

Load the confirmation URL that you receive in the approval email message from the cloud administrator. Log in to the system with the login and password that you chose when filling out the application form.

3. Obtain Credentials

Once you have logged in, you will see the 'Generate Certificate' button under the 'Credentials' tab. Generating a certificate for your account is necessary before you can use Amazon's EC2 command-line tools for querying and controlling Eucalyptus instances. Currently, the Web interface to Eucalyptus is limited and, hence, the use of command-line tools is practically inevitable.

Click the button to generate the certificate and save it. You can keep these keys in a secure place on any host. The following command-line instructions apply to any Unix-flavored machine with bash (not necessarily the cluster where Eucalyptus was installed). (See Amazon's Getting Started Guide for the similar instructions to use under Windows.)

Unzip the keys using the following command and protect them from exposure. The zip-file contains two files with the .pem extension; these are your public and private keys.

mkdir ~/.euca
cd ~/.euca
unzip name-of-the-key-zip.zip
chmod 0700 ~/.euca
chmod 0600 ~/.euca/*

Finally, ensure that the environment variables necessary for euca2tools to work are set by sourcing the eucarc file:

. ~/.euca/euca2-*/eucarc

4. Quick Start

Now you can begin running VM instances on the Eucalyptus cloud. Using the EC2 command-line tools, you can learn about installed images, start VM instances using those images, describe the running instances, and terminate them when you're finished with them.

The following EC2 commands will allow you to query the system:

euca-describe-images
IMAGE <emi-id> ...

euca-describe-instances
(will be empty until you start an instance, as shown below)

euca-describe-availability-zones

euca-describe-keypairs
(will be empty until you add key pairs, as shown below)

Before starting a VM, you need to create at least one key pair. This key pair will be injected into the VM, allowing you to SSH into the instance. Below we will use mykey as a handle, but you may choose any string you like instead:

euca-add-keypair mykey >mykey.private
('mykey' is the name for the key in Eucalyptus, 'mykey.private' is the file to be used by ssh)

chmod 0600 mykey.private

euca-run-instances -k mykey -n <number of instances to start> <emi-id> 

euca-describe-instances
(should now show the instance)

If your administrator has configured Eucalyptus to provide security groups and elastic IPs, you may be required to allow logins to your instance, allocate a public IP (if you have not done so before, check 'euca-describe-addresses' as a reminder), and assign it to your running instance:

Allow 'ssh' connections from the Internet:

euca-authorize -P tcp -p 22 -s 0.0.0.0/0 default

Allocate a public IP if you have not done so already:

euca-allocate-address

Associate an allocated IP with your running instance:

euca-associate-address <IP from allocate> -i <instance ID>

Once the instance is shown as 'Running', it will also show two IP addresses assigned to it. You may log into it with the SSH key that you created:

ssh -i mykey.private root@<accessible-instance-ip>

To terminate instances, use:

euca-terminate-instances <instance-id1> <instance-id2> ... <instance-idn>

Please, see Amazon's EC2 Getting Started Guide for more information about these command-line tools. Keep in mind that, depending on how the administrator has configured Eucalyptus, not all tools/operations are necessarily supported (security groups/elastic IPs). Consult your administrator for more information.