Author Archives: Ranjit Singh Thakurratan

My First OpenStack Alamo Installation

This week, after I was able to create the containers, I had my first taste of Alamo deployed on my home environment.  I will write down step-by-step installation process in the next blog. The Alamo installation is very easy and comparable to ESX + a few extra options about passwords and networks.

Below is a screen shot of the console how it would look. Pretty similar to vmware’s ESX(i).
Also a really interesting article about Cloud computing, if you are trying to understand what it really and truly means is below. Its a 2009 article but gives you a decent idea about what its about.
Posted in: Virtualization / Tagged: , ,

Deploying OpenStack Alamo in a Nested ESX(i) box to test

So its exciting news that Rackspace has gone Open Cloud. However, very few of us have the luxury to run Open stack on its own dedicated controller/compute nodes, although an all-in-one configuration can be run. For instance, in my home lab, I am running it now as a nested hypervisor because that will allow me ample flexibility to get to know it.

If you are running vmware ESX(i) then you are in luck as the doc lists all the changes that you will need to do to the vm container in order to get OpenStack Alamo to run. Cody’s instructions on how to get the container ready helped greatly.

However, I have the OVA’s in here so you can download them. These containers, one for controller and the other for the compute node, have been preset with all changes necessary so your OpenStack Alamo installation will boot up with no issues. They are only 78KB each because they are empty containers 🙂 So clone them to multiple compute nodes as needed 🙂

Remember to change the cpu/ram/disk sizes as necessary. I marked disks as thin but if you have tons of disk to play with then you may delete and recreate it. These are empty containers and you can boot them up to the Alamo iso or cdrom.

Controller-Node – Download Here (78KB)

Compute-Node – Download Here (78KB)

Let me know if you run into problems!

Posted in: Virtualization

Rackspace Launches OpenStack Private Cloud

Exciting news is that Rackspace launched OpenStack Private cloud!

More info about Open Stack Private cloud.

 

Posted in: Technology

Don’t forget your commands


In today’s dont forget your commands section or DFYC for short,

To login on mysql server,
>mysql -u username -p (hit enter) and then the password prompt is shown.
To create a database obviously,
> create database xxxxx;
To create a user,
> create user username identified by “password”;
To grant this user privs on a db
> grant all privileges on db.* to [email protected];
Dont forget to flush privileges
> flush privileges;
Posted in: Technology

How big is a snapshot by default?


So, I have been in the dark. (I attached a random pic not really of a snapshot :D)

I was under the impression that the snapshot in vmware – when a snapshot a snapshot is created will only be a few megabytes. Well I was wrong!
When a snapshot is created – the .vmsn which is the snapshot state file and stores the running state of the virtual machine – aka its RAM. So this will be = to the size of the RAM that is set for the virtual machine.
So if a virtual machine is with 16GB of RAM – then the .vmsn file which is created in a snapshot will be of that size 16GB!
Needless to say , the snapshot file which is the <vname>-Snapshot<###>.vmsn grows with the snapshot.
Posted in: Virtualization

Python and Me – How to create a simple function?

I have always been into programming but never had been full time in it. Now I will admit I did get super close to getting hired as a jr. java programmer but that never happened!

While I have no regrets I am learning python now – not because I have to – but because I want to! Being able to write some code has always sounded cool to me and so here goes.

I am learning py (short for python here after) from a bunch of resources ranging from a pdf to codeacademy online. This is my first blog so I will kick this off with how to define a basic function in py(atleast what I have learnt so far).

So in py, you will declare a function with the DEF key word. Below is an example.
def myfirstfunction():
              print “this is my first function”
Well as you can see fairly simple, but wait – not so fast champ. So in py unlike in other languages, you don’t close a function. It sort of closes itself with the space thats left below the print. Py is a very space conscious language so watch out for those careless tabs and spaces that you may have in your program. Any weird spacing will throw a “IndentationError: expected an indented block”. So remember the statements start with atleast a space in py function and the function closes with a empty line after the last statement.
How do you call it? Well thats easy, just run myfirstfunction() and it will print – this is my first function.
Also remember you cannot start the function name with a number or special character.
Hit back if you have any questions.
Posted in: Technology

Welcome to rjapproves!

Hello there!

 

Thanks for stopping by, I will get started on posting stuff soon!

 

RJ

Posted in: Virtualization