Switch from okeanos.io to demo.synnefo.org

Hello Synnefo users,

You may have noticed that lately, we have been trying to separate the Synnefo software from the IaaS service it powers, ~okeanos. The latest step towards this direction is the rename of our demo deployment of Synnefo. The demo has been called okeanos.io for a while now and has now changed to demo.synnefo.org. Also, to ease the transition, the okeanos.io URLs now point to the synnefo.org page.

What does this change mean to you? Well, mainly two things have changed:

1) The NAT gateway of your VMs has now changed from gate.okeanos.io to gate.demo.synnefo.org. This change affects the hostname you SSH to.
2) The authorization URL that grants API access has changed to https://accounts.demo.synnefo.org/identity/v2.0/. This is especially important for all the users that have been using kamaki. These users will need to do the following:

1) Get the correct authentication URL and token from your API access page.
2) Create (or edit) an entry to your .kamakirc like the following:

[cloud "demo"]
url = https://accounts.demo.synnefo.org/identity/v2.0/
token = myT0k3n==

3) Check if you can authenticate with your credentials:

kamaki user authenticate --cloud demo

For any problems or questions, you can consult our support page.

Synnefo Live CD Released

Hello everybody,

We have some exciting news for all of you that want to try out our latest Synnefo software: οur team has managed to bundle it into something as small as a USB stick. That's right, there is now a Debian-based, Live CD edition of Synnefo which can be deployed from your server or even your home computer!

The key features of this Live CD are:

1. It just works!
2. The ability to create and run Virtual Machines depending either on Debian Wheezy (included), one of our pre-configured images or one of your own.
3. Create private virtual networks and connect your Virtual Machines.
4. Test Archipelago, our new ultra-fast volume layer.
5. Use Pithos, our storage service based on the OpenStack Object Storage API.

Moreover, we have stayed true to the plug-and-play nature of Live CDs, meaning that you will be able to experience Synnefo straight from the Live CD, without installing it or doing any configurations to your machine.

So, grab a copy (1,3GB, .iso image) from the Synnefo page (or directly from here), boot it and experience all the latest features of Synnefo!

For those unfamiliar with the Live CD process, you can follow the instructions below:

1. Burn the image either to a DVD or USB medium. The image file is ready to be burnt in a DVD but, for those that want to write it in a USB stick, there are several ways, depending on your Operating System:

For Linux, you can use dd:

dd if=/path/to/Synnefo-LiveCD.iso of=/dev/sd* bs=4M && sync

where /path/to/ is probably your Downloads folder and /dev/sd* your unmounted USB device.

For Windows, you can use one of the programs in this list.

2. Plug your Live DVD or USB and change the boot sequence in BIOS/UEFI to primarily boot from DVD or USB.
3. Once the Live DVD or USB has booted, choose the "Default" option and in less than a minute, you will be greeted with a Firefox session that will give you a brief description of your live environment. From there on, you can freely experiment with Synnefo.

Caveats:

1. Only 64-bit CPUs that have virtual extensions are supported
2. Since this is a Live CD, the VMs' disk storage will also reside in RAM. This typically means that you can create only a small amount of VMs. VMs created with Archipelago however, are far less constricted by this.
3. The Debian image is Squeeze, so the latest Nvidia/AMD GPUs may not be supported.

Finally, note that the Live CD is still work in progress. If you find any bugs or want to leave some feedback, you can contact us at synnefo{at}googlegroups{dot}com.

Enjoy,
the Synnefo team

Synnefo @ CloudOpen Europe 2013

Hello everybody,

the schedule for LinuxCon/CloudOpen Europe 2013 has just been announced and we are more than pleased to be a part of it. Vangelis from our team will be giving a talk/demo about Synnefo on Tuesday.

So, join us at CloudOpen 2013, to learn more about Synnefo and see how it is used in large scale production environments.

See you all in Edinburgh,
Constantinos

Synnefo v0.14 Released

Hello Synnefo users,

we are happy to announce that Synnefo v0.14 is out!

Synnefo v0.14 was not planned to be a major-features release, but rather one concerning compatibility and uniformity issues regarding the way different components are handled and how they interact with each other. However, during the above process, it came out that to achieve what we targeted, we had to refactor some parts of the code and abstract others, so at the end some important changes actually happened.

In v0.14 we standardize on the URL patterns across all Synnefo components, we clearly distinguish components (e.g.: Astakos, Cyclades, Pithos) from services (e.g.: Keystone, Account, Compute, Image, Quota, Object Store), introduce a new, generic way to register components/services/resources, and update the APIs to be compatible with the latest corresponding OpenStack specifications.

Also, since v0.14, Synnefo is branding neutral. All '~okeanos' and 'GRNET' references have been removed and we have additionally introduced a new component: snf-branding, which enables Synnefo users to easily adapt a Synnefo installation to their company's/organization's visual identity.

Finally, we introduce a new tool called 'snf-deploy' which automatically deploys Synnefo. As a first step, we provide a new guide that explains how to use the tool to deploy the whole Synnefo stack on one node in few minutes time.

Specifically, copy/pasting from the NEWS file:

Synnefo-wide

• Standardize URLs for Synnefo Components
  • impose structure and naming conventions to all URL related settings. Make each component deployable under a user-configurable <COMPONENT>_BASE_URL. Each API (compute, image, etc.) is deployable under a developer-configurable prefix beneath BASE_URL
• Branding customization support across Synnefo frontend components
  • ability to adapt the Astakos, Pithos and Cyclades Web UI to a company’s visual identity This is possible using the snf-branding component, which is automatically installed on the nodes running the API servers for Astakos, Pithos and Cyclades
• Create a JSON-exportable definition document for each Synnefo Component (Astakos, Cyclades, Pithos, etc.) that consolidates APIs (services), resources, and other standardized properties (e.g. default URL prefixes)
• Implement common client for communication with Astakos and proper error handling

Astakos

• Redesign of the accounting system (quotaholder) and integration into Astakos
• Implementation of the Κeystone API call POST /tokens
  • Specified the API call allong with a procedure to register a Synnefo component (e.g. Cyclades) along with the services it provides (e.g. Compute, Image, Network) and the resources it handles (e.g. vcpu, ram)
• Astakos specific API calls are moved under ‘/account/v1.0’
• Support API calls for quotas, commissions and resources
• Improve user activation process
• Improve limit of pending applications by making it a quotable resource
• Added fine grain user auth provider’s policies
• Overhauling of Astakos management commands for usability and uniformity

Cyclades

• Speed up private network creation, by creating a network on a Ganeti backend only when a server connects to that network
• Rename management commands for commissions and resources for uniformity with other services
• Synchronize Cyclades API with Openstack Compute v2.0 API

Pithos 

• Various minor fixes

Tools

• Introduce the 'snf-deploy' tool, which automatically deploys Synnefo on a number of nodes

Synnefo v0.14 doesn't support Ganeti 2.7 as originally planned, since Ganeti 2.7 was not yet officially released at the time when Synnefo v0.14 was out. Hope to have it officially supported at the next version of Synnefo.

As always, any kind of feedback is highly appreciated.

Enjoy,
the Synnefo team

First Google Ganeti Conference: GanetiCon 2013

[UPDATED with the new GanetiCon 2013 website links]

Hello everybody,

we are very pleased to announce that this year we are co-organizing the first Google Ganeti Conference: GanetiCon 2013.

The conference will take place between 3-5 September 2013 in Athens, Greece.

The first GanetiCon will be a developers oriented conference, and it will mostly include design talks and discussions about new features and future plans. It will also probably feature an advanced Ganeti workshop, depending on user demand. Additionally, anybody who is interested in:

• learning how other companies/institutions use Ganeti
• checking out how large scale Ganeti deployments look like
• glimpsing the product roadmap of Ganeti
• contributing to future design of Ganeti
• obtaining help with specific Ganeti issues

should definitely attend.

Most developers of the Ganeti and Synnefo team will be there, so it will be a great chance to meet you all in person, and answer all your questions.

If this sounds exciting and you are interested in attending the first GanetiCon please fill out the registration form or the CFP. Stay tuned.

See you all in Athens!

on behalf of the Synnefo team,
Constantinos

Synnefo team @ Xen Hackathon 2013

This year's Xen Hackathon will be kindly hosted by Google and will take place at Google's Dublin offices.

Six months ago, we thought that since Synnefo uses Ganeti at the backend and Ganeti already supported Xen as the underlying hypervisor, why not try to port Synnefo to use Xen too? What would that mean and what would that take to happen?

It would mean that anybody running Ganeti with Xen, would be able to just install Synnefo on top of their current deployment, and have their own public or private cloud. Nice.

And how could we do that? Since Synnefo keeps clear separation between the cluster management layer and the cloud layer, the changes should have been minimal and only few components should get affected. Indeed, after some design discussions it came out that only two Synnefo components should be ported:

• snf-image: Ganeti OS Definition that handles image deployment and customization
• snf-network: component that handles the host's networking after a NIC is up

snf-image has already been ported since v0.8 and now supports Xen. snf-network is even easier to port, but to do so we need some additional Ganeti support.

To implement such support in Ganeti, we introduced the corresponding topic at this year's Xen Hackathon. Dimitris and Stratos from the Synnefo team will be attending the hachathon to handle the job :)

So, if anybody of you is willing to help, or just want to meet the guys from the team, or learn more about Synnefo, feel free to fire up a conversation at the event. They will be more than happy to chat with you. You can also reach them at:

Dimitris: dimara@grnet.gr
Stratos: psomas@grnet.gr

Synnefo Services and REST APIs

Today, we'll see an overview of the Synnefo Services and the RESTful APIs that enable Synnefo to talk to the outside world and vice versa.


Synnefo has three (3) basic components that provide all its Services. These components are:

• Cyclades: Compute, Network, Image, Block Storage Service
• Pithos: File/Object Storage Service
• Astakos: Identity, Quotas Service

Synnefo exposes the OpenStack APIs for most of its operations. Also, extensions
have been written for advanced operations wherever needed, and minor changes
for things that were missing or change frequently. Specifically:

The following diagram shows the layered approach of Synnefo and the various APIs for each Service. The corresponding Synnefo component that implements each Service also appears in the diagram:

As shown above, the Synnefo Web UI is a standalone Javascript client that speaks the Synnefo APIs. There is also an intuitive command line client called kamaki, that speaks the APIs and can be used to access Synnefo. Furthermore, one can use the kamaki library for programmatic access.

To learn more about the APIs, please take a look at the detailed Developer's Guide. If you want to learn more about the Synnefo architecture, please take a look at the official documentation.