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% Pouta Blueprints overview % Olli Tourunen @ Elixir Clouds and VMs workshop, Espoo, 2016-05-23

Overview

Pouta Blueprints?

  • web interface to resources provisioned in the cloud
  • open source project hosted at GitHub
  • developed by CSC - IT Center for Science
  • buzzwords: Docker, Angular, RESTful, Ansible, self service, SAML2, notebook
  • PB for short

Concepts

  • system admins make blueprints, e.g. configurations or templates
  • users launch instances of blueprints
    • currently instances can be containers or VMs
  • instances are time limited, quota limited, disposable
  • users are authenticated (unlike http://tmpnb.org)
  • user accounts are either
    • locally added by admin (via activation email)
    • based on SAML2 identity

PB Service

  • CSC runs a Pouta Blueprints server
  • open to anyone with HAKA federated identity credentials
  • currently in public beta
  • blueprints for RStudio and IPython/Jupyter notebooks
  • available at https://pb.csc.fi
  • deployed in cPouta

Use case: Notebooks for a course on pb.csc.fi

The Professor

"I would like to have an RStudio environment where I can just point my students to by sharing a link. The environment should contain the latest version of the exercises I made."

The Professor

  • prepares a notebook for a lecture
    • the notebook can download more material when launched
  • uploads it somewhere in the web
  • points the students to https://pb.csc.fi

The Student

  • receives a link to the system (and activation token if necessary)
  • opens a browser and logs in
  • launches an instance of the course blueprint
  • learns something

The System

  • launches a new container instance per student with the newest version of the lecture notebook
  • manages a pool of VMs running these containers
  • removes instances when they expire
  • recycles old pool VMs for increased security

Missing bits

Permanent storage

  • currently all instance data is deleted when the instance lifetime ends
  • a permanent session concept would make the service useful for serious work
  • many open questions from technical to policy level
  • IMHO: if there is storage, it needs to be reliable from the start
  • Idea: provide examples how to use external storage

User grouping

  • currently no grouping of users, just a flat list with admin flag on or off
  • groups would be useful for
    • limiting access and visibility to blueprints
    • creating global blacklists, whitelists

Group managers

  • at the moment only admins can manage blueprints
  • currently users that have admin rights are full admins
  • in pb.csc.fi CSC admins will have to make all modifications to blueprints -> does not scale
  • enter Group managers
    • can create user groups
    • can customize selected properties of blueprints (size, bootstrap url, ...)

Accounting

  • before long, we need to be able to track who is running and how much
  • with the additional features above, a single service instance can be used to provide custom, private content for a closed course etc.

Finally

Summary

  • Pouta Blueprints is open source software for sharing your cloud resources
    • anyone is free to deploy a copy and contribute
  • pb.csc.fi is a pilot service operated by CSC
    • users can launch notebooks
    • open for Finnish researchers and students

Thanks!

Questions, please!