Virtual or baremetal machine¶
Starting your first Virtual or Baremetal Machine¶
The basic infrastructure service offers a broad range of available resources: from a light virtual machine to a heavy duty bare metal server. In this guide we will create a single virtual or baremetal machine.
From now on, we will use subcommands of slices bi. Let’s have a look at the help of this command:
(slices-venv) ~/.ssh$ slices bi --help
Usage: slices bi [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
Initialize BI Context.
╭─ Options ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --site-id SITEID Site ID [env var: SLICES_BI_SITE_ID] [default: bi-orchestrator] │
│ --help Show this message and exit. │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ console Open a browser with a console to a resource. Also print the link that is opened. │
│ create Request basic infrastructure (BI) resource. │
│ create-from-file Request basic infrastructure (BI) resources, described in a file. │
│ destroy Destroy one or more basic infrastructure resources. │
│ extend Extend the expiration date of one or more basic infrastructure resources (on a single site). │
│ list-resources List basic infrastructure details of BI resources in an experiment. │
│ reset Hard reset a resource. │
│ show Show single resource details. │
│ ssh Log in to a resource using SSH. Alternatively, show info, such as the login command. │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands with subcommands ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ diskimage Disk images. │
│ flavor Flavors. │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
To create a machine, we use the command slices bi create. You can run this command with --help
for an overview of the available configuration parameters:
(slices-venv) ~$ slices bi create --help
Usage: slices bi create [OPTIONS] RESOURCE
Request basic infrastructure (BI) resource.
╭─ Arguments ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ * resource TEXT Name of the resource. [required] │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Options ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ * --experiment TEXT Experiment name or ID. [env var: SLICES_EXPERIMENT] [required] │
│ --image TEXT ID of the image. [default: Ubuntu 24.04.1] │
│ --flavor TEXT ID of the flavor [default: default per site] │
│ --duration -d DURATION_OR_DATETIME Lifetime of the resource. Can be extended later on. │
│ [default: 3h] │
│ --user-data FILENAME File with cloudinit user-data. │
│ --wait Wait till resource is ready after creation. │
│ --public-ipv4 Request a public IPv4. │
│ --count INTEGER Number of resources to create. │
│ --ssh-key SSH-KEY (Extra) SSH public key to register for login. │
│ [env var: SLICES_SSH_KEY] │
│ --ssh-key-file FILENAME (Extra) SSH public key file to use for login. │
│ [env var: SLICES_SSH_KEY_FILE] │
│ --help Show this message and exit. │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
The defaults are chosen in a way that they work both for a virtual machine and a baremetal machine. With setting the below environment variables you choose between vm and baremetal for the rest of this tutorial.
(slices-venv) ~$ export SLICES_BI_SITE_ID=be-gent1-bi-vm1
or export SLICES_BI_SITE_ID=be-gent1-bi-baremetal1
(slices-venv) ~$ export SLICES_EXPERIMENT=first-experiment
(slices-venv) ~$ slices bi create server
✨ Created server with ID r_be-gent1-bi-vm1_01ja6smxsefvtvv3b4hqkze4mc
Note
In a typical simple workflow, you will work with resources on a single site and within a single experiment. Then, it’s
very easy to define the environment variables SLICES_BI_SITE_ID and SLICES_EXPERIMENT as almost all
slices bi commands need that information. However, you can always use the arguments --site-id and --experiment
(they will also overrule the environment variables).
Of course, if you want to finetune your operating system and flavor of the machine, this is also possible.
The sites offer a few different operating systems where you can choose from. The images will differ from site to site
with some common ones (typically the ubuntu OS).
Use slices bi diskimage list to get an overview of the available disk images for a site.
Each image has a unique ID and a friendly name. Both can be used.
(slices-venv) ~$ slices bi diskimage list
Images
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┓
┃ ID ┃ Name ┃ Created At ┃ Tags ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━┩
│ image_be-gent1-bi-vm1_7rhy7cadxf8t6rrny5743g7p5w │ Ubuntu 24.04.1 │ 2024-10-15 01:33 CEST │ │
│ image_be-gent1-bi-vm1_01hxc1pwntes4r2a317hx3je6g │ Ubuntu 22.04.5 │ 2024-05-08 14:09 CEST │ │
│ image_be-gent1-bi-vm1_01hxc1pvhgegcs44xpdm376kf6 │ Debian 12.7 │ 2024-05-08 14:09 CEST │ │
│ image_be-gent1-bi-vm1_01hxc1pa0af0yvb65p1tr5t5fc │ Debian 12.5 │ 2024-05-08 14:08 CEST │ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┴───────────────────────┴──────┘
We can also choose the appropriate ‘flavor’ for our machine, which determines the amount of CPU, memory and disk space that we will have.
(slices-venv) ~$ slices bi flavor list
Slices BI Flavors on be-gent1-bi-vm1
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name ┃ Desc ┃ (v)CPUs ┃ RAM (GiB) ┃ Root Disk (GB) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ m1.medium │ Medium General Purpose VM │ 4 │ 8 │ 10 │
│ m1.tiny │ Minimal VM │ 1 │ 1 │ 0 │
│ m1.xlarge │ Extra Large General Purpose VM │ 8 │ 16 │ 40 │
│ m1.small │ Small General Purpose VM │ 1 │ 2 │ 10 │
│ m1.large │ Large General Purpose VM │ 4 │ 16 │ 20 │
└───────────┴────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┘
Let us look at an example with some options. This example is for be-gent1-bi-vm1, look at the output of the
above commands for choices at other sites: let us request a small VM called server2 with the Debian 12.7 disk image,
which we will start in our experiment called first-experiment for a duration of 1 day. Note that we also show how to
use --experiment as alternative to the SLICES_EXPERIMENT environment variable.
(slices-venv) ~$ slices bi create server2 --duration 1d --image "Debian 12.7" --flavor m1.small --experiment first-experiment
✨ Created server with ID r_be-gent1-bi-vm1_01ja6smxsefvtvv3b4hqkze4mc
Note
To prevent resources from being abandoned without being properly cleaned up, all resources have a limited lifetime.
This lifetime has a maximum of 2160 hours (=90 days).
You can however always extend your resources lifetime (see further) up to 90 days into the future.
This might change in the future. It might require specific quota to have long running experiments.
**The default duration is currently 3 hours. Use --duration to change this.
The status of this new machine can be queried by listing the resources in your experiment first-experiment:
(slices-venv) ~$ slices bi list-resources
Resources in experiment exp_expauth.ilabt.imec.be_01ja6rp4mcff5vv4awam662n3d
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID ┃ Name ┃ Status ┃ Created At ┃ Expires At ┃ Public IPv4 ┃ Private IPv4 ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ r_be-gent1-bi-vm1_01ja6smxsefvtvv3b4hqkze4mc │ server │starting│ 2024-10-15 02:36 CEST │ 2024-10-16 02:35 CEST │ │ 10.10.221.8 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────┘
We see that the machine is still starting at the moment. If the status is reported as up we can login with ssh on our machine. If you also started the server2, you will see two machines listed.
Accessing the machine¶
Once the machine has reached the state up, you can login.
As you can see in the output of the slices bi list-resources command above, the machine has a private IP address.
Slices offers SSH jump hosts which allow you to seamlessly connect into the machine.
Use slices bi ssh <resource id> to SSH into your machine (this also uses automatically the right login name,
e.g. debian or ubuntu):
(slices-venv) ~/.ssh$ slices bi ssh server
ssh -J proxy@xxx debian@10.10.221.8
Linux server 6.1.0-26-cloud-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.112-1 (2024-09-30) x86_64
...
debian@server:~$
You can also manually use the printed ssh command in a terminal.
With sudo you can execute commands as root on the machine. With sudo su you become root on the machine.
Note
With all commands you can use the ID or Name of the machine.
Emergency access to the machine¶
If, due to certain circumstances, you lose SSH access to your machine (for example due to unexpected side-effects of a firewall change) you have a few options to regain access to your machine. The options can vary per site. Hard resetting the machine will work on all sites. Console access is available for the virtual machines.
Rebooting the machine¶
If a simple hard reboot of your machine can solve the problem, you can use slices bi reset. You can check the uptime afterwards.
(slices-venv) ~/.ssh$ slices bi reset server
Console access¶
This currently only works on be-gent1-bi-vm1. The service offers console access to your VM via web-based
VNC, which offers you a virtual display and keyboard.
Use slices bi console to get the URL to your console:
(slices-venv) ~/.ssh$ slices bi console server
Console user: xxx
Console pass: xxx
Console URL: https://xxx
You should browse to the URL (depending on your setup, a browser might automatically start up) and then you will be able to use that login and password to login on the console.
Extending the lifetime of your machine¶
To extend the lifetime of a resource, use slices bi extend.
For example, to extend the lifetime of your machine to 2 days from now:
(slices-venv) ~/.ssh$ slices bi extend server --duration 2d
Extending Experiment container from 2024-10-16 03:38 CEST to 2024-10-17 03:53 CEST...
Extending resource on be-gent1-bi-vm1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
♻ Resources on site be-gent1-bi-vm1 now expire on 2024-10-17 03:53 CEST.
Terminating the machine¶
When you have finished your work on the machine, we ask you to clean up and remove your machine. As stated before, every resource has an expiration time. At that time, the resource will be lost automatically and is unrecoverable.
However you can also manually terminate a machine as follows.
For this we use the slices bi destroy command, which needs an experiment name and resource id.
Note
In this command we force you to use the --experiment option to prevent any surprise of destroying the wrong
resource.
(slices-venv) ~/.ssh$ slices bi destroy --experiment first-experiment server
Deleting server ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0% -:--:--