Private Academic Cloud Computing on ulno.net

Meeting Report PACC

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Report on 16/4/13

Yana

Building GUI

Met problem with overwriting personal files Research on parallelized processes, ssh keys

To Do

Assess if the moodle has heart bleed vulnerability(OpenSSL)

Kamilla/Asset

No progress on iScazy

Gpu passthrough to guest machine

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Good day, readers! I want to share with you some ideas on GPU virtualisation.

This topic is pretty new for me, however, since I had experience with CUDA, and some times was called ‘The gpu master’ by our prof, i decided to take this as a challenge for myself

Introduction

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Hello everyone! My name is Georgiy, origin is Almaty, Kazakhstan and I am assisting to professor Ulrich in creation and maintenance of Private Academic cloud, in Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev University. I had some experience with CUDA programming in past, not afraid of trying something new, have a pretty wierd (but lazy) mind, so maybe that’s why I am here.

So, these are my jan through feb activities

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

During the period starting from 27 Jan and lasting till 24 Feb the following jobs were performed: Got

clear understanding and aims of existing task. Prepared pcs for execution of future tasks. Learned

Virtualisation, part II

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

So, last two weeks were pretty difficult for me, maybe because of warm spring (at freaking last!), maybe because I had studied a lot.

Despite these facts i have some results on my virtualization research.

PACC Meeting April 9, 2014

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Ulrich: Good news. We might be able to hire interns for summer. Nursultan might be convinced to be POC if I am not available in the summer. We might want to find newer projects, an area where he can perform more work. My wish is that he likes his team and be able to direct it well. Aleks is now with us, and will be helping the administrative aspects, and might be interested in some of your work.

PACC project report 1

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

My and Asset’s task for the first few weeks of the PACC research was to assemble, configure and run the Synology Diskstation DS413j. (). Initially we had 5 of them, each having 4 hard drives 4GB each.

PACC report 1

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

.. post_format:Link .. tags:iSCSINAS

Hello, this is my first post during Spring 2014. To start with, my first task was related to NAS (Network Attached Storage), in collaboration with Kamila we assembled 5 Synology DS413j Diskstations. Synology DS413j is a 4 bay NAS server. Each NAS has total of 16TB memory. As always we couldn’t install the software using official manual, but with help of professor we finally found our NASs in the network ( more on this in Kamila’s post).

Report (Almas) early draft

Sun, 06 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Lab 7422

January - february 2014:

Used chmod -R 777 on user/local, created vulnerability that may have been exploited by viruses and malware. Corrected by UlNo (old local folder was deleted and copy was cloned from other PC).

PACC (report 1)

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Hi,

this is the first report on the work I done for the PACC Project.

I had joint the group in the beginning of February. First few weeks I was busy with the 4th floor lab setup. During the 1st week I had checked the functionality of hardware, installed Ubuntu on lab machines and reported any hardware related issues to the IT.

Part-time Job at PACC (post 1)

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0200

Hello to everyone who might be reading my post now!

So, I started my part-time job at PACC project in the beginning of February.

We firstly started by setting up the computer lab on the 4th floor. We found out that there are several machines that do not work properly or were configured in a wrong way. So we needed to check each computer to make sure everything is working.

Hello Everybody!

Sun, 16 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0100

Hello everybody!

My name is Alibek Sailanbayev,

Recently I became a member of your team, nice to meet you!

Now I’m working in project about “data retrieval”..

Regards, Alibek Sailanbayev

Report I

Sun, 16 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0100

MapReduce in HDFS (Hadoop File System)

MapReduce - is a framework for distributed computing of tasks using a large number of computers (called “nodes”), forming a cluster. HDFS has its own MapReduce framework.

Program of the Seminar on Academic Cloud Computing

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Click on Seminar on Academic Cloud Computing Program to link to a copy of the program.

Seminar Summary

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0100

More than 40 researchers, practitioners, and students attended and participated in the Seminar on Academic Cloud Computing held in the School of Science and Technology at Nazarbayev University on November 20, 2013.

Final Agenda for the Seminar on Academic Cloud Computing

Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0100

**Date: **20 November 2013 **Time: **9:00 AM – 16:30 PM **Location: **Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan **Venue: **School of Science & Technology, Block 7, 7210

The seminar gathered researchers, practitioners, and students in the area of cloud computing in an academic setting. The seminar showcased presentations on different research projects, a keynote speech by the Primary Investigator of the Private Academic Cloud Computing project and a keynote on Software Engineering the Cloud by an international invited guest speaker. The focus of the seminar was on the benefits of cloud computing in the areas of academic research, teaching, and administrative operations.

Discussion Table Topics (& Moderators)

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The seminar culminated with small group discussions addressing the following topics:

GPU Computing and Computer Applications in Health Care (Magzhan Ikram)
Academic Cloud Computing Student Projects: Industry & University Internships and Opportunities (Laura Paluanova)
Localizing Cloud Services to Run Your Own Dropbox, Email, VOIP System, or Social Network (Ulrich Norbisrath)

Keynote Speaker Biographies

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Dr. Ulrich Norbisrath is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Nazarbayev University’s School of Science & Technology. His research is in the areas of Ubiquitous Computing and Information Management. He works on ad-hoc networks and spontaneous private clouds as well as a biometric technology broker framework. His Friend-to-Friend (F2F) Computing concept allows for the ad-hoc establishment of scientific- or service-based networks or private clouds. He has developed methods and tools to support migrating legacy desktop and server environments to the cloud and calculating their respective costs. Professor Norbisrath teaches courses on agile software development, graph transformation, systems, and mobile computing.

Map and Access Information to Nazarbayev University

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0100

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.

Presentations for the Academic Cloud Computing Seminar

Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0100

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.

Seminar sponsorship package details

Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Sponsorship Package for the Seminar on Academic Cloud Computing

Sponsor Level & Amount (in KZT)	Bronze (150,000-300,000)	Silver (300,000-750,000)	Gold (750,000+)
_Link to sponsor on the seminar website_
_Sponsor logo included on the seminar invitation_
_Included in seminar program circulated to all attendees_
_Company logo included on screen presentations_
_Banners, provided by sponsor, to be placed within venue_
_Table space for sponsor promotion throughout event_
_Sponsorship acknowledgement in host presentations_

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.

Additional information for seminar participants: Transport, lodging & food

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0200

**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).

PACC Week 7 Report

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

.. tags:Proxmox

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.

Owncloud Week 6 Report

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Owncloud Week 5 report

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

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.

PACC Week 6 Report

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

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

Stop network manager

sudo stop network-manager

'PACC: Week 8'

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

When I was setting PAM authentication via LDAP I noticed one undesirable thing. When I log into the machine as an LDAP user it sometimes mixes up LDAP and local users. For instance, the user akim can access the home directory of csc-151-1 (even though they have different home folders). You can see the example below.

'PACC: Week VIII'

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

On this week, I was dealing with problem of VM connection with host servers in libvirt. I have set aside the variant of using VDE, and continued to work on other possible solutions.

Owncloud Week 4 Report

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

In order to test alternatives to owncloud, VirtualBox with Debian was installed. I plan to test there Owncloud running on Nginx+Mysql combination, since the main server in our lab is running on Debian. I am also planning to install Seafile and OX, in order to research which of the following cloud services is a better solution to our project. Now I am facing the problem of the OX server authentification, need to resolve this, and continue the configuration. Information on Ajaxplorer: http://ajaxplorer.info/ Here is the link to the OX installation tutorial http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open-Xchange_Installation_Guide_for_Debian_6.0_622

PACC Week 5 Report

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

.. tags:webvirtmgr

I joined my colleague Temirlan, now we are trying to setup connection between VMs that are hosted on different machines. I started by setting up my webvirtmgr servers. Now I have 2 servers each running 2 VMs. To do this I used links that I found at Temirlan’s post and also his help.

'PACC: Week 7'

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The last week I was trying to establish a secure connection between LDAP server and clients. I first tried STARTTLS but could not configure it properly. The connection didn’t look to be secure between the clients and the server but between LDAP server and OwnCloud server only.

PACC: Week VII

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

After finishing my work on the acceleration of the VMs on my host server, with SPICE implementation I continued to work on the problem withconnection of VMs of different hosts

Transparent Proxy Week 4 Report

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

This week’s task was to install and run squid transparently. Unfortunately I figured out that DNS server is not working, I don’t know why, but at least I know that it was working when I installed it. I guess when I was experimenting with Squid I have messed something up.

Owncloud Week 3 Report

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Owncloud:

Rsnapshot now works properly, it performs backups on a regular scheduled basis as cron jobs.
Secure connection can now be established, since the SSL certificate was created.
Problem with the upload limit was resolved, both the php.ini and admin tab’s settings should be set up to the same value.
Remote connection from outside via Cygwin and SSH was established. All functionality of the owncloud was tested, synchronization and other stuff works properly.

Research:

Weekly meeting July,2 2013

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Professor Norbisrath:

Trying to get extra hard drives

Shyrailym:

Contacted the Baadal development group in India, wants to set up a system here. System however is not finished yet, but some of its features could be very useful, for instance KVM.
Partially help Android department

Raushan:

PACC: Week 6

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Worked on LDAP and Owncloud. At first, they worked fine together but user login names were displayed as sequences of random characters (for example, 0f47af12-70ef-1032-92b6-890f766dd4b3). This was fixed by simply specifying internal username attribute in advanced settings tab.

PACC: Week V

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I have been absent for the last week, so here I will report about the things that I achieved before my leave . So mostly, I have been working on the acceleration of the VM

Diagram from meeting

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Transparent Proxy Week 2 Report

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

This week’s task was to create virtual network which will be similar to our lab’s network in order to test and evaluate Squid caching proxy server. Lab’s server has 2 network adapters: one is connected to university’s network, which has proxy, and another is hosting local network inside the lab, which uses transparent proxy implemented via redsocks. So all machines in our lab “think” that they don’t have a proxy.

Transparent Proxy Week 3 Report

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

This week I was creating virtual network. First of all, I need to make server VM to use proxy from university’s network. For this I used tunnelling, basically what I did was following: from server VM I ssh to lab’s server and tunnel ports so server VM could get internet with proxy from university’s network. Command looks like this:

PACC: Week 5

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The past week I continued working on LDAP and PAM.

I thought that it would probably be useful if I had all users and groups stored in my LDAP. So, I imported existing groups and users. That resulted in 88 groups and 56 users, including not only real users, but mostly such items as avahi, bluetooth, video, audio and etc.

OpenStack Week 3

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

This week I deployed OpenStack.

In order to do that get devstack project from the github. We need its stable grizzly branch version:

https://github.com/openstack-dev/devstack/tree/stable/grizzly

By default Network management is not installed, so add this text into “localrc” file:

Owncloud Week 2 Report

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Mobile application:

Owncloud official app requires installation of aCal, CardDav and other programms to provide functionality to the app, such as calendar, contacts and tasks synchronization. However, this is not direct sync with default mobile calendar, but rather with aCal’s calendar, which is a bit useless.
Other 3rd party clients are under development and also require additional app installation.
Solution: It would be better to connect to owncloud via browser, or process it so as to produce the mobile version (as Damir said, it is one of the three methods of creating mobile apps).

Backup: I have started searching for possible backup options:

Meeting report on 19.06.13

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Prof.Norbisrath: started project with mathematicians

Looked for prices of clouds: very cheap Amazon give computing resources for first year for free,

The 1 hour of computing only 2 cents the cheapest one.

PACC: Week IV [VM network connection]

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

For this week, I continued to work with M23 program. Particularly on problem how to get to VM IP adress from physical network and VM be able to see all the machines in it. There are some different ways to do that:

'PACC: Week 4'

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

At the beginning of the week, I introduced Epoptes and Italc to my new peers and we all agreed that Epoptes would be the best choice.

I tested wake-on-lan by powerwake, when computers are completely powered off, hibernated or suspended. It worked fine besides suspend. I think the problem is not in WOL since, after suspend, computer doesn’t normally wake up on its own.

'PACC: Week IV'

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Overview:

For this week, I have continued my work with libvirt manager. After getting the server running on one of the lab computers. I created several VMs for working on demo, which have been established on our meeting about virtualization.

Owncloud server and client installation

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Week 1 report:

-created server for owncloud and several users -installed clients on Ubuntu, Windows and Android -test and evaluate it

Create server:

For xUbuntu 12.10 run the following as root:

Transparent Proxy Week 1 Report

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The problem was that at some point server was not responding and internet was down, so you needed to restart redsocks manually. As it seems when number of open connections exceeds 2000 server cannot open any more web pages, so internet was unavailable. This problem was solved by firstly raising the file limit and then starting redsocks. Here is the code:

'PACC: meeting 4 notes'

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Good news! Air-conditioning will be installed!

Prof.Norbisrath: Brainstorming scenarios about the PACC project From next week new research assistant, help in organization of Mobile Computing Class. Android Netbeams is too problematic for development in Android(won’t be used)

Starting PACC Internship

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Hello everyone,

My name is Yerkanat and will work with you at NU PACC project.

I plan to work about 9 hours a day, mostly in the lab.

My research topics:

PACC: Week 2-3

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

During the past two weeks I was sick most of the time. I attended only on Monday in week 2 and on Thursday-Friday in week 3.

The following is what I did during those three days:

PACC: Week III

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

For this week, I started to work with program called m23. It is an alternative to the WebVirtMgr, but have much more capabilities.

Prof. Norbisrath showed us how we could connect the VMs on the server to the host (without DHCP), and assigned us to work further trying to establish connection. Alexander is going to work on connection between host with VM inside server. Meanwhile, I am trying to establish the connection between VMs themselves.

Starting internship

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Hello everyone, my name is Aset. I am an intern at NU Private Academic Cloud Computing project. I plan to work for about 5-6 hours a day.

My research topics:

Starting PACC Internship

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Hello everyone,

My name is Kamila and I am an intern of the NU Private Academic Cloud Computing project.

I plan to work for about 7-8 hours a day, partially at home.

PACC: meeting 3 notes

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Notes from PACC meeting

Date: 06.06.2013

Ilya & Damir

Programming in android studio, created application
Found resources for in class tutorials
Developing in eclipse
Read getting started Android, noticed that it is not productive

'PACC: meeting 2 notes'

Tue, 28 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Notes from PACC meeting

Date: 28.05.2013

Ilya & Damir

Evaluate Android studio & Eclipse
Coordinate with each other

Goal: application with server side

Alexandr

CFEngine3, requires installation on client side
M23 only server side installation
Uses static IP for server machine. Elaborate on this.
Has GUI

TODO:
- M23 further examination & integration plan
- Write scenario about usage of the remote administration & deployment.

Temirlan
- Documentation about installing Epoptes
- Remote connection of VMs with ssh tunnel
- Textual description of GUI (like scenario)

TODO:
- Email Ulrich about GUI chapter & scenario feedback
- Amend scenario with sketches

Yerkanat
- Has looked at OpenStack cloud system

TODO (unofficial):
- Ubuntu enterprise cloud feedback

Assulan
TODO
- look into ssh tunnel and host networking in VMs

Ulrich also clarified VM networking modes.

Good overview of KVM networking modes: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Networking

'PACC: week 1 conclusions'

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

This past week I have started working with webvirtmgr (http://webvirtmgr.net/) that allows to create and manage VMs based on kvm using libvirt python bindings. I created a host server and several guest VMs with Linux Mint installed on them.

'PACC: Week 1'

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

At the PACC internship, at first, I started working on Italc software. I installed the program but faced some problems with authentication keys.

Then I changed the rights to the keys folder, so that a normal user (e.g. teacher) could launch Italc master’s interface.

'PACC: Week I'

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Overview:

Started research with working on iTALC installation, for monitoring lab computers. Found the alternative program called “epoptes” http://www.epoptes.org;

Here is the official installation guide http://www.epoptes.org/installation

However I have written some additional guide, which were based on the one from russian forums (Here the link http://forum.ubuntu.ru/index.php?topic=206483.0)

PACC Project: 1st meeting (May 22)

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

**Assulan: **Worked on Virtual Web Manager (web interface), created a host-server and two virtual machines (2nd is a clone of the 1st one). Faced problems with setting up (resolved). Next step: remote connection (remotely connected virtual machines).

Internship PACC First group welcome notes

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Very exciting news. I received bridge funding for my PACC research grant, and we will now start the assoicated interships with the respective students. I already welcome Alexandr, Alxandra, Temirlan, and Assulan, who will now enrich this blog with their wisdom.