Lance Albertson

After nearly a month and a half (42 days) of development since 0.4 was released, the OSUOSL has released Ganeti Web Manager 0.5 today. This second release has some very nice new features included in it:

• New status Dashboard
• Integrated noVNC, an HTML5 + WebSockets VNC viewer
• New Twisted based VNC Auth Proxy
• Virtual machine re-install implemented
• Auto-start is now an option during VM creation
• Ram and CPU quota is now based off running virtual machines
• Improved layout
• Numerous bug fixes and improvements.

Read the full ChangeLog for more details.

noVNC Console

My favorite new feature by far is the inclusion of noVNC by default for VNC console access. This removes the Java requirement for your browsers and makes it much easier to use. It works the best using Chrome/Chromium but you can also use Firefox.

noVNC console

New Overview Page

I’m also excited about the new overview pages for users and admins. It makes it much easier to see the usage of your cluster(s) quickly. For users it will show some basic resource/quota usage.

New Overview Page

Upgrading

If you’re upgrading from 0.4 be sure to read the upgrading wiki page and go over the installation page again. We’ve added a few new requirements such as South for database migrations and Twisted for the new VNC Auth Proxy.

Be sure to also check out Peter’s blog post about the 0.5 release as well!

For the last several months I’ve been trying to find a new hobby that is totally different than anything else I’ve been interested in. Like any geek I always find myself dinking around on my laptop at night so it makes me wonder what I’m doing with my brain looking at a computer screen all day. Thankfully I do enjoy another hobby with music and playing my trumpet in a local jazz band. It fills a specific kind of a void but I wanted to have something new to try.

My dad recently told me he decided to get radio controlled flying and had gotten a couple of helicopters and a simple plane from a hobby store in Topeka, Kansas. After talking to him it suddenly triggered childhood memories of going to RC airplane shows and wanting to get into the hobby at some point. After being so involved with band and computers for so long I had forgotten that dream … until now.

A few weeks ago I decided to buy a coaxial helicopter from a local hobby store Trump Hobbies. Its a Blade mCX2 and cost around $135 which includes a controller and batteries. It’s a really easy micro-helicopter to fly around the apartment and was the catalyst for me getting re-interested in RC. I eventually bought a new carbon fiber tail fin to make it perform better but I knew I could have more fun.

About two weeks later I decided to “upgrade” to a single-rotor helicopter and get something bigger as well. I ended up getting the Blade 120 SR ($150) which is twice the size as the Blade mCX2. I took it out for a spin and soon discovered how more difficult a single-rotor heli can be. Since the heli was a little too big for me to fly around the apartment (at the time) I decided to get the Blade mSR ($99) the next day which is the same size as the mCX2 but a single-rotor design.

The nice thing about getting the mSR is that it came with a 4-port battery charger with an AC adapter so now I could charge more than one battery at a time. I have enough spare batteries that I can fly the mSR almost definitely (which may or may not be a good thing). I have four 500mAh batteries for the 120 SR which gives me about 45 minutes of fly time.

My heli fleet thus far. (left to right: Blade mCX2, Blade 120 SR, Blade mSR)

That brought my “fleet” up to three aircraft. I’ve been flying the mSR around the apartment and really starting to get the hang of it. It’s also been helping me train for flying the larger 120 SR. I’ve been trying to make it to a local park after work to get an hour or so of fly time with the 120 SR and mSR. I’m lucky that Oregon is blessed with low winds in the valley generally so I can enjoy these helicopters more. So far I haven’t crashed them to the point of having to do major repair on them (knock on wood). I’m really impressed with the durability of the helis, especially the mSR. I’m also impressed with their performance capability. The only problem I’ve had is losing rotor linkages on the 120 SR but thankfully I have enough spares to make it through a session.

So far Miles (my cat) has enjoyed watching me fly the helis around the apartment but he doesn’t like it when I try flying closely around him. Imagine that! Anyways, I’ll try blogging about this new found hobby of mine when I can. I’ve already made a wish list which includes several airplanes and a better transmitter. This new hobby is certainly a nice escape from work.

Want to work at the coolest place for open source and support the missions of some of the most important open source projects?

Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab is recruiting a full-time software developer who will analyze, design, and test software code for Ganeti Web Manager, the Protein Geometry Database and several other homegrown Open Source Lab projects. Development at the OSUOSL includes collaborations with academic and research faculty internal and external to OSU.

Reporting to the Operations Manager of the Open Source Lab, the Analyst Programmer will contribute in-depth knowledge of open source software development using languages such as Python, Ruby and Java. The person in this position is responsible for developing and modifying complex software applications, documenting code and development processes, and overseeing student software developers. This position will allow the candidate to interact with many of the open source projects hosted by the OSL. We seek candidates with a high level of initiative, motivation, and a high degree of success in previous endeavors.

To review more a more detailed job description and apply, check out the Analyst Programmer role on Oregon State University’s Jobs page.

Lead OSUOSL Developer Peter Krenesky has written an excellent blog post going over how the permission system works in Ganeti Web Manager. A key feature I’m looking forward to using more at the OSUOSL is managing our clusters with the following scenarios:

• Fully managed - users have no access at all.  Only admins can create, reboot, or modify.
• Partially managed - users can’t create virtual machines, but they have some limited ability to manage them.
• Self Service - users can create virtual machines on demand.  They can create and manage their own virtual machines as needed.
• User Managed Cluster - a user has control of an entire cluster.

The permission system in GWM will enable Ganeti cluster admins the ability to manage each cluster and virtual machine in finer detail. Ganeti by itself doesn’t come with any sort of user access management system, nor should it really. It makes sense to build tools like GWM on top of Ganeti to deal with such situations. I hope to see more features and bug fixes related to the permissions and quota system.

I’d love to see some feedback on how we implemented the system and how we can improve it!

After three months of development Ganeti Web Manager 0.4 has been released! This project has been developed primarily by the OSU Open Source Lab with help from the folks at GRNET and several Google GCI students. Ganeti Web Manager (GWM) is a Django-based web application that connects to the Ganeti Remote API. It allows Ganeti administrators access to the various common tasks along with incorporating a permission system. GWM has a long ways to go in terms of implementing more of the RAPI features and UI improvements but this first release should be enough to get people to start using it in production. You can download Ganeti Web Manager here.

Features in 0.4:

• Caching system
• Permissions system:
  • User & Group management
  • Per cluster/virtual machine permissions
• Basic VM management: Create, Delete, Start, Stop, Reboot, VNC Console
• SSH key feed (for a ganeti post-install hook)
• Basic quota system
• Import tools

Basic Installation Requirements

GWM has a fairly low requirement footprint and only requires a minimum amount of Django dependencies.

• Django >= 1.2
• django-registration
• object_permissions (packaged with releases)
• sqlite3, mysql, or postgresql

Currently Firefox and Chrome browsers should work well although know that IE will have issues. I certainly hope whoever is using this application has at least Firefox installed. You will need the Java browser plugin in order to the VNC console. The VNC console requires direct access to the VNC port on the VM but we are working with GRNET to add in a VNC Auth Proxy to get around that.

Ganeti compatibility:

• >= 2.2.x – supported
• 2.1.x – mostly supported
• 2.0.x – unsupported but may work
• 1.x – unsupported

Screenshots:

List all virtual machines on a cluster:

Creating a new virtual machine form:

Virtual machine reation output dynamically updating:

Virtual machine VNC console using the java client.

Upcoming Features

We have lots of features we would like to eventually implement in GWM. You can see many of them on our issue tracker but here’s a summary of notable features we plan to do.

• VM Management: Modify, Reinstall, Migrate/Failover
• Improve usability of forms
• Optional NoVNC console access
• Serial console support
• Implement the rest of the RAPI features that are supported
• VM Creation templates
• VNC Proxy

I’m excited to see where Ganeti Web Manager goes. I plan to start rolling it out at the OSUOSL very soon and giving access to some of the projects we host. If you would like to become a contributor to the project, please check us out on IRC in #ganeti-webmgr on Freenode.

Check my blog and Peter’s blog for more updates soon on Ganeti Web Manager.