Configuring the elasticslice client

First, you need to configure your environment to run the basic elasticslice client tool. Set your PYTHONPATH environment variable correctly to include the place where you installed elasticslice and geni-lib (as specified in the installation instructions).

Second, you’ll need to place your GENI certificate, passphrase, and CM certificates, into your home directory in the .ssl directory. All GENI XMLRPC methods must be called with appropriate credentials, and for you that means your certificate and its passphrase. By default, elasticslice looks for your certificate in ~/.ssl/encrypted.pem, and it looks for the passphrase for that certificate in ~/.ssl/password. If you don’t specify your passphrase, you’ll be prompted for it on stdin for each RPC!

Finally, copy etc/main.conf from the elasticslice source repository to ~/.protogeni/elasticslice.conf, and modify it as necessary (i.e., set a slicename, a default CM, and a nodetype). Note that any options supplied on the command line override those in the configuration file. Here’s a simple version that targets a particular slice on the Apt cluster, and will populate it with nodes of type c6220:

[MAIN]
#
# Use this URN as the default slice URN so you don't have to specify
# one every time.
#
slicename=urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net:tbres+slice+djdynslice1
#
# Certificate and passphrase files.
#
cert=~/.ssl/encrypted.pem
passphrasefile=~/.ssl/password
#
# The CM targeted by default -- i.e., the cluster at which your
# nodes will be allocated by default.  Make sure your certificate
# will be accepted here.
#
default-cm=apt
#
# A certificate for the CM, so it can be verified.
#
cacert=~/.ssl/apt-cacert.pem
#
# A node type to use by default when adding nodes, or computing
# type-specific availability thresholds in the manager.
#
nodetype=c6220
#
# Use a simple cache to alleviate load on XMLRPC server.  Certain
# methods are very expensive (i.e., GetResources on the Emulab CM
# takes many seconds); and some return values are useful until they
# expire (i.e., credentials).
#
fscache=True
#
# An image to use by default when adding nodes.
#
image_urn=urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+image+emulab-ops:UBUNTU14-64-STD

#
# DAEMON (AUTO-MANAGEMENT) MODE SETTINGS
#
# If `automanage` is True, the daemon's automatic manager thread
# will run immediately at program start and create, renew, and
# add/delete nodes to/from the slice as necessary, according to policy.
#
# If `autostart` is True, the client's internal XMLRPC server will
# be automatically started at program start as well.  This server
# accepts notifications from a daemon running at the CM.  For
# instance, the CM's daemon will notify this client of new
# server-side resource values, and also if/when it needs to reclaim
# elastically-added nodes from this slice.
#
# If you don't plan to run in daemon mode, set these to False.
#
automanage=False
autostart=False
#
# These options specify Python classes for the manager, helper, and
# clientserver endpoint.  The defaults are the SimpleElasticSlice*
# classes below; but of course you can extend or replace them.  Note
# that the SimpleElasticSliceManager also currently provides the
# clientserver endpoint interface; thus that option is unspecified.
#
manager_class=elasticslice.managers.core.SimpleElasticSliceManager
helper_class=elasticslice.managers.core.SimpleElasticSliceHelper
clientserver_endpoint_class=
#
# These options provide several basic policy knobs to the
# SimpleElasticSlice* family of classes.  In management mode, the
# manager will always maintain at least `minthreshold` nodes in your
# slice, and will never add more than `maxthreshold` nodes.
# Furthermore, it will maintain the slice's allocation to respect
# the `percent_available_minimum` threshold, which is a minimum
# amount of free nodes to ensure are available at the CM.  In other
# words, the manager will continuously poll the amount of available
# nodes at the CM, and adjust its own allocation to ensure that
# there are at least `percent_available_minimum` percentage of free
# nodes at the CM.  That said, it will never reduce below the
# `minthreshold`, and never add nodes above the `maxthreshold`.
#
minthreshold=3
maxthreshold=10
percent_available_minimum=0.33
#
# If True, the manager is allowed to automatically delete nodes.
#
enable_delete=True
#
# If automatic manager deletion is enabled, wait at least this many
# seconds in between successive node deletions (removals of a node
# from your slice).
#
node_delete_wait_time=300