All seminar attendees not affiliated with Nazarbayev University are advised to bring personal identification to present for access at the university entrance on the day of the event. The seminar will be held in the School of Science & Technology, in Block 7, room 7210. Please click on the the map below to enlarge the image.

Sponsorship Package for the Seminar on Academic Cloud Computing

• Gold level sponsors will be credited with sponsoring the entire event.

• Silver level sponsors will be credited with sponsoring an invited speaker.

• Bronze level sponsors will be credited with sponsoring the seminar’s refreshment and lunch breaks.

Following are the presentations that have been confirmed for the Academic Cloud Computing seminar to be showcased at Nazarbayez University on November 20. Please also see the links to the Call for Participation and Call for Presentations that contain pertinent information on this seminar open to all interested attendees at no cost.

PRESENTATIONS

Keynote #1: "Private Academic _Cloud Computing -- An Experience Report on Using Existing Infrastructure for Cloud Resources at Nazarbayev University"_

Keynote #2: "Software Engineering the Cloud -- Developing Software for a Clean Approach to Using Cost-Effective Cloud Resources for Wind Turbine Forecast Prediction"

Abstract of Keynote #2: This presentation reports on our experience using cloud computation for training neuronal networks for wind turbine weather forecast predictions. The training of multiple neuronal networks is embarrassingly parallel and just needs inexpensive CPU time -- locally or in the cloud. It does not need high quality services (e.g., 24/7 availability). First, we considered using the existing cloud services offered by Amazon. To increase flexibility and to be less dependent on a specific cloud provider, we decided to build our own job management infrastructure. To minimize the required administration, our cloud infrastructure automates as much work as possible. To achieve high automation, we developed our cloud infrastructure using a very clean development method: story driven modeling. Our infrastructure offers the desired flexibility and runs reliably on different clouds. In addition, it also enables special features like remote debugging support for cloud projects. This presentation will cover the cloud infrastructure and  lessons learned from its creation.

Introduction to Talks: "Research in Teaching"

Talk #1: _"_Cloud Internship Report"

Talk #2: _"_G-Cloud and R&D at NITEC___"

_Talk #3: "_GPU Computing -- Using the __P__ower of Graphic Cards __for __High Performance Computing Resources"

Talk #4: "Using Amazon Web Services in Research & Teaching ­– Two Case Studies"_

Attention students, colleagues, researchers, and professionals:

You are invited to participate in the seminar on Academic Cloud Computing to be held in Astana, Kazakhstan, which will gather researchers and practitioners in the area of cloud computing in an academic setting.

The event will take place on Wednesday, November 20, at Nazarbayev University.  The seminar will showcase presentations on different research projects, a keynote speech by the Primary Investigator of the Private Academic Cloud Computing project and a keynote by an international invited guest speaker. It will offer numerous opportunities for networking, exchanging ideas, and collaborative development. The focus of the seminar is on the benefits of cloud computing in the areas of academic research, teaching, and administrative operations.

To register for the seminar (at no cost, as this is covered by our research grant), please contact Prof. Ulrich Norbisrath through the contact information found here.

If you are interested in presenting at the event, please see the Call for Presentations post that follows.

Also, if you are interested in sponsoring this event and have your company be represented at the conference, please contact Prof. Norbisrath.

We look forward to meeting you in Astana!

The faculty from the School of Science and Technology of Nazarbayev University invite proposals for individual presentations for a seminar on Academic Cloud Computing scheduled for 20 November 2013. The seminar will be hosted by Nazarbayev University.

The seminar’s sponsor welcomes proposals relating to all aspects of cloud computing, particularly as they apply to academic research, teaching, administrative operations, and industry outreach.

Researchers and practitioners of computer science, data management, computer networking, computer security, industrial applications and other related disciplines are encouraged to participate.

Submission of proposals

We encourage the submission of abstracts by interested presenters. Speakers will have 15 minutes to deliver their work, followed by time for questions and general discussion. Abstract proposals should include a clear theme and rationale for bringing the speakers together.

Please note: the official language of the seminar is English. Individual paper proposals will only be accepted in English.

You may submit your proposal abstract to Prof. Ulrich Norbisrath through the contact information found here. The participation in the seminar is free of charge. To register (at no cost, as this is covered by our research grant), please also contact Prof. Ulrich Norbisrath.

Important Dates

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: To get to Nazarbayev University take buses #10, 12, 27, 30, 40, 41, or 43. One-way bus ticket fare is 60 KZT, and mini bus ticket fare is 65 KZT (must be paid in cash to the fare collector on the bus).

TAXI SERVICE:

ACCOMMODATIONS:

RESTAURANTS: In terms of food, Astana offers a growing array of cuisines that are uniquely influenced by its history and its geographic positioning between East and West.****

This week I was working on Proxmox Virtual Environment, which is a Open Source Server Virtualization Platform, based on KVM and OpenVZ.

First of all, I tried to install Proxmox on VirtualBox. The OS installed fine but in order to control server you need to use web browser. So I needed connect to Proxmox server from Host machine. I tried several configurations NAT + Host-only and Bridged Network, but the connection was not established.  It seems that Proxmox network settings are always creating bridge to any new interfaces. I didn't really understand what was wrong, because the same configuration was forking fine on other OS.

The next step was to install the system on actual machine. Since I didn't have any CD/DVD disks I created boot-able USB stick. The problem was that I could boot from it but I couldn't install from it. After searching the web I found solution which is a bit tricky. You just add Proxmox image to the boot-able USB stick and switch to the verbose mode mount Proxmox image and install it manually (useful link). Even though I could run the installation wizard, I couldn't install the system. Before I created ext4 partition on main hard drive, but the installation wizard recognized only whole hard drive, which means it would delete everything from that hard drive, but it is unacceptable.

Finally, I found way to to install Proxmox on USB stick. First you need to install VirtualBox, then create VM Linux Debian 64 bit, but it should be without any _Virtual Disk_. Then plug in your USB stick (at least 8 GB) and in VM's settings under USB page click on_ _ Enable  USB 2.0 (EHCI) controller. Click add button and select your USB stick. If required install _**Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack. **_ It might be so that you won't see any available USB drives, but they are plugged in. To solve this you need to add your user to vboxusers group by typing in terminal **sudo adduser "username" vboxusers. **Then reboot and install Proxmox in VirtualBox as usual except only that it will be installed on your USB drive. When loading from USB you will find an error message, to solve it in GRUB menu press **e **and add **rootdelay=90 **to the line where written something like this "kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-4-pve root=/dev/mapper/pve-root ro" and press ctrl+x, Proxmox will boot normally from USB stick.

So I installed Proxmox, and can connect to it via browser from any machine (https://192.168.19.15:8006). Next couple of days I will experiment with Proxmox VE.

This week I worked on configuration of owncloud on Debian. - At first I tried to set it up on Nginx and Mysql, but following the tutorials, I faced various problems during the actual configuration. I tried installation of the LNMP first and then owncloud:

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
apt-get install nginx
/etc/init.d/nginx start
mkdir /var/www
chown www-data:www-data /var/www

apt-get install php5-cgi php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-ming php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl
nano /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini
(uncomment the line cgi.fix_pathinfo=1:)
apt-get install lighttpd
update-rc.d -f lighttpd remove
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9000 -u www-data -g www-data -f /usr/bin/php5-cgi -P /var/run/fastcgi-php.pid
nano /etc/rc.local
(add before the exit line /usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9000 -u www-data -g www-data -f /usr/bin/php5-cgi -P /var/run/fastcgi-php.pid)
nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
(change to worker_processes 5; keepalive_timeout 2;)
nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

See this tutorial for further configuration of the server: (http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-nginx-with-php5-and-mysql-support-on-debian-squeeze) Try out http://192.168.0.100/info.php Tutorial for owncloud installation (http://www.howtoforge.com/running-owncloud3-on-nginx-lemp-on-debian-squeeze-ubuntu-11.10) Then I tried to install owncloud over it, however, there was problem re-configuring the default webserver.

• Then, as professor Norbisrath allowed me to do, I installed Owncloud on LAMP

apt-get update
apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server mysql-client php5-mysql phpmyadmin
cd
apt-get update && apt-get -y install apache2 php5 php-pear php-xml-parser php5-sqlite php5-json sqlite php5-mysql mp3info curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl zip php5-gd
wget http://download.owncloud.org/releases/owncloud-4.0.2.tar.bz2 && tar xjf owncloud-4.0.2.tar.bz2 && cp -r owncloud /var/www/ && chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

$ mysql -u adminusername -p
Enter password:
mysql>CREATE DATABASE owncloud;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON owncloud.* TO "mycloud"@"localhost" IDENTIFIED BY "mypassword";
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> EXIT
$

This week I was working on connection between Guests that are located at different Hosts. The solution that worked was Bridged networking ("shared physical device").

Host configuration 1. Stop network manager

sudo stop network-manager

• Create two files with only the word 'exit' in them. These files are:

/etc/default/NetworkManager /etc/default/NetworkManagerDispatcher

1. Altering the interface config

2. Take down the interface that will be bridged

sudo ifdown eth0

• Edit /etc/network/interfaces

iface br0 inet dhcp bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp on bridge_maxwait 0

auto lo br0 iface lo inet loopback

• Then

sudo ifup br0

• Edit /etc/sysctl.conf

net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0 net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0 net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0

• Load the settings

sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

• Edit /etc/rc.local

/sbin/sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS  --clamp-mss-to-pmtu exit 0

• To verify changes

tail /proc/sys/net/bridge/* iptables -L  FORWARD

• Sample output

root@sst7422-20:/home/sstadmin# brctl show bridge name    bridge id        STP enabled    interfaces br0        8000.180373447ce9    yes        eth0 vnet1 virbr0        8000.fe54006bbb40    yes        vnet0

Guest configuration

virsh edit

   # try this if you experience problems with VLANs

Also I tryed to forward incoming connections from Host to Guest, but it was unsuccessful. I couldn´t start VM and got 512 error message. Usefull link.

• This week I tried to install and configure the Open Xchange, however following official tutorials, as well as other specialists' guides, I was not able to configure it properly, since at the time, when the OX is trying to connect to the server and create user, it reports that there is an Authentication failure. Then I tried to install OX from Quick Installation Script, however I still wasn't able to configure and run OX as it was intended. (http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Quickinstall_script)

• I successfully installed Seafile 1.5.0 on Debian 6. Previously I tried to install the newest version, however there was some bug, since the installer didn't recognize the presence of the python-simplejson, which was needed for further steps, complaining that there is still no one, however, it was installed already, re-installed and even updated. Then I tried the older version and it worked properly. Evaluation: I don't consider Seafile as a good alternative to Owncloud, since even if it has such option as folder encryption, which protects user's data from being viewed by the server admin, Seafile lacks functionality - no easy-to-upload interface, since you first need to create workspace and only then to upload files. It doesn't have calendar, to-dos and other in-built apps.

• I tried to setup Owncloud on Debian+nginxs+mysql, however pre-installation of LNMP and then reconfiguring owncloud to work with it, gave no result.

TO-DO: - Solve the problem with the OX, configure it and evaluate. - Try another way to install Owncloud on LNMP.