This page details how to use our dashboard to manage bookings, connect to the community lab VPN, and how to control your booked servers in a pod using ipmitool.
Using Lab As A Service
The IOL now provides an Akraino Lab as a Service (LaaS) dashboard for users to book Akraino pods.
We are transitioning to this automated system in favor of manually managing bookings thru the calendar and emails.
You can access our dashboard here: https://akraino-lab.iol.unh.edu/
Making a Booking
First, you must authenticate with your LF account.
To do this, click the user icon on the top right of the home page. A drop down with a single control reading "Login with Jira" will then appear, click the control.
You will then be redirected to another page where you can provide your credentials.
Once you log in, you will be able to make a booking.
Click on the large green button that reads "Book a Pod" to access the booking page.
The booking page should look like this:
First, you must select the UNH IOL as your lab of choice.
Then, you may pick from the available pods on the right for your booking. To deselect the resource/lab controls, simply click the select button again.
Once you have selected your desired pods, you must fill out the required Purpose, Project, and Hostname fields.
Finally, you may submit the form and create your booking by clicking the green Continue button located in the far bottom right area of the page.
After your booking is submitted, you will be redirected to your booking's status page.
It will take 10 to 30 minutes for our back-end to process your request.
The status page should look like this:
Once all of the tasks for your booking's creation are complete, you may log in and use your hosts.
Adding Collaborators with the Collaborators Field
You may optionally add collaborator LaaS users to your booking.
These users will also receive VPN accounts and have their SSH keys copied onto your booked hosts.
Just enter their username or email into the text box control, and select the correct user(s) from the resultant list.
Cancelling a Booking
Before you cancel your booking, ensure that you have already pulled all important data off of your hosts.
After your booking becomes inactive, we can not guarantee that any of your data is recoverable.
To cancel a booking, go to My Bookings under the Account tab as shown here:
The My Bookings page lists all of the booking objects you own. You can view the start/end dates and also cancel your booking from here.
The site will prompt you two additional times after clicking the cancel button before actually cancelling the booking.
Notification Inbox
You can find all of your notifications, which also contain important information on how to access your hosts, by clicking on the Inbox button on the left margin.
These notifications should also be emailed to you automatically. In the case that they are not, you can still access them here.
Using the VPN
To connect to the UNH-IOL OpenVPN server, you must download the ovpn file attached to your FreeIPA email that is sent to you upon making a booking. You will also need to have an OpenVPN client installed on your machine (most Linux distributions ship with this by default).
For the most consistent results we highly recommend using a dedicated network manager. In Ubuntu this can be found in Settings > Network and from there add a new vpn using import from file. Upload the .ovpn attached in your booking email and then enter the username and password and click add. After this is done you will need to use follow the directions provided in your booking email to change your password.
Using ipmitool
Once your booking is created a set of IPMI credentials will be generated for each server in your POD. Your IPMI credentials will be emailed to you after your booking is confirmed. Additionally, your IPMI credentials can also be found on the LaaS dashboard under Account > My Bookings and then selecting the Details on your booking.
Through the IPMI interface you will be able to check the power status, as well as power on or off the server and reboot. The commands below demonstrate those actions:
$ ipmitool -I lanplus -L OPERATOR -U akraino -P <ipmi_password> -H <ipmi_address> chassis power status $ ipmitool -I lanplus -L OPERATOR -U akraino -P <ipmi_password> -H <ipmi_address> chassis power <on/off/cycle>
For a more comprehensive overview of ipmitool you may use the following command:
$ man ipmitool
Support/FAQ
I cannot connect to the vpn!
Please make sure that you can reach our vpn server, eg
$ ping akraino-vpn.iol.unh.edu
If you can ping the vpn server, but cannot establish a vpn connection, a firewall is likely to be the culprit. Please verify that there is not a firewall on your network that will block the vpn connection.
My booking is taking a long time to complete!
If it takes more than several hours for your booking to be confirmed, you should contact the lab by email at akraino-lab@iol.unh.edu.
General Support
If you have further questions or problems, you may contact the IOL Akraino team at akraino-lab@iol.unh.edu. We are able to assist you with any connectivity or dashboard problems and will work to respond within one business day.