Preparation Guide for New PRAGMA Cloud Site

All PRAGMA member institutions are encouraged to contribute their systems and technical support to Routine-basis experiments in PRAGMA testbed.

 Non-member institutions may be able to participate as well. You may email to Cindy Zheng for initial contact.

 All participating sites are committed to a close collaboration within PRAGMA resources working group with their resources and technical expertise.

Here is the procedure for join PRAGMA Cloud:

1. Identify one or more VM hosting server(s) which can be shared in PRAGMA Cloud and satisfy the following minimum requirements:
   1. at least one internet connection to the frond-end node
   2. at least 8GB RAM
   3. at least 500GB disk space
   4. modern processor that supports hardware virtualization (2010 or later)
   5. running UNIX flavored virtualization system
   6. running Gfarm 2.4.2
      • Must be GSI-enabled
      • Preferably to setup your VM hosting server as a Gfarm file system server
        • If you run Rocks/Xen, see the guide
        • For other platforms, see a Gfarm file system server setup example
      • Must install and enable Gfarm client on your VM hosting server. See a Gfarm client setup example
   7. has an users guide on how to deploy an application VM from Gfarm storage. Here is an example for Rocks Xen platform
2. Identify one or more technical supporter for your system
3. Email the following info to Cindy Zheng
   1. your site contact (management) name and email address
   2. technical supporter(s) name(s) and email address(es)
   3. your VM hosting server hostname / IP address
   4. if your clusters backend nodes are on a public network, the IP address range
   5. specifications of your VM hosting server
   6. your CA certificate and signing policy files (if your CA is IGTF approved, skip this item, mark it as "in IGTF distribution")
      If your institution does not have a certificate authority service yet and/or you are still using SimpleCA, you can:
      • Use PRAGMA experimental CA as short term solution (send request to Cindy), or
      • Setup your own certificate authority service. You may want try Naregi-CA or OpenCA, both are free and IGTF-compliant CA software.
   7. URL to your system's users guide
4. Setup certificates update on your VM hosting server. See some "how-to's"
5. Implement firewall settings
6. Test Gfarm access and VM deployment on your VM hosting server