Docklet

https://unias.github.io/docklet

Intro

Docklet is an operating system for virtual private cloud. Its goal is to help a user group effectively share cluster resources in physical datacenter or in the cloud. In Docklet, the shared resources are organized and managed as a virtual private cloud among the user group. Every user has their own private virtual cluster (vcluster), which consists of a number of virtual Linux container nodes distributed over the physical cluster. Each vcluster is separated from others and can be operated like a real physical cluster. Therefore, most applications, especially those requiring a cluster of resources can run in vcluster seamlessly.

Users manage and use their vcluster resources all through web. The supported resources include CPUs, GPUs, shared storage, etc. The only client tool needed is a modern web browser supporting HTML5, like Safari, Firefox, or Chrome. The integrated jupyter notebook provides a web Workspace. Users can code, debug, test, and run their programs, even visualize the outputs online. Serverless computing and batch processing is supported.

Docklet creates virtual nodes from a base image. Admins can pre-install development tools and frameworks according to their interests. The users are also free to install their specific software in their vcluster.

Docklet only need one public IP address. The vclusters are configured to use private IP address range, e.g., 172.16.0.0/16, 192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.0/8. A proxy is setup to help users visit their vclusters behind the firewall/gateway.

Architecture

The Docklet system runtime consists of four main components:

• distributed file system server
• etcd server
• docklet supermaster, master
• docklet worker

For detailed information about configurations, please see Config.

Install

Currently the Docklet system is recommend to run in Ubuntu 15.10+.

Ensure that python3.5 is the default python3 version.

Clone Docklet from github

git clone  https://github.com/unias/docklet.git

Run prepare.sh from console to install depended packages and generate necessary configurations.

A root users will be created for managing the Docklet system. The password is recorded in FS_PREFIX/local/generated_password.txt .

Config

The main configuration file of docklet is conf/docklet.conf. Most default setting works for a single host environment.

First copy docklet.conf.template to get docklet.conf.

Pay attention to the following settings:

• NETWORK_DEVICE : the network interface to use.
• ETCD : the etcd server address. For distributed multi hosts environment, it should be one of the ETCD public server address. For single host environment, the default value should be OK.
• STORAGE : using disk or file to storage persistent data, for single host, file is convenient.
• FS_PREFIX: the working dir of docklet runtime. default is /opt/docklet.
• CLUSTER_NET: the vcluster network ip address range, default is 172.16.0.1/16. This network range should all be allocated to and managed by docklet.
• PROXY_PORT : the listening port of configurable-http-proxy. It proxy connections from external public network to internal private container networks.
• PORTAL_URL : the portal of the system. Users access the system by visiting this address. If the system is behind a firewall, then a reverse proxy should be setup. Default is MASTER_IP:NGINX_PORT.
• NGINX_PORT : the access port of the public portal. User use this port to visit docklet system.
• DISTRIBUTED_GATEWAY : whether the users' gateways are distributed or not. Both master and worker must be set by same value.
• PUBLIC_IP : public ip of this machine. If DISTRIBUTED_GATEWAY is True, users' gateways can be setup on this machine. Users can visit this machine by the public ip. default: IP of NETWORK_DEVICE.
• USER_IP : the ip of user server. default : localhost
• MASTER_IPS : tell the web server the ips of all the cluster master.
• AUTH_KEY: the key to request users server from master, or to request master from users server. Please set the same value on each machine. Please don't use the default value.

Start

distributed file system

For multi hosts distributed environment, a distributed file system is needed to store global data. Currently, glusterfs has been tested. Lets presume the file system server export filesystem as nfs fileserver:/pub :

In each physical host to run docklet, mount fileserver:/pub to FS_PEFIX/global .

For single host environment, nothing to do.

etcd

For single host environment, start tools/etcd-one-node.sh . Some recent Ubuntu releases have included etcd in the repository, just apt-get install etcd, and it need not to start etcd manually. For others, you should install etcd manually.

For multi hosts distributed environment, must start tools/etcd-multi-nodes.sh in each etcd server hosts. This scripts requires users providing the etcd server address as parameters.

supermaster

Supermaster is a server consist of web server, user server and a master server instance.

If it is the first time you start docklet, run bin/docklet-supermaster init to init and start a docklet master, web server and user server. Otherwise, run bin/docklet-supermaster start. When you start a supermaster, you don't need to start an extra master in the same cluster.

master

A master manages all the workers in one data center. Docklet can manage several data centers, each data center has one master server. But a docklet system will only have one supermaster.

First, select a server with 2 network interface card, one having a public IP address/url, e.g., docklet.info; the other having a private IP address, e.g., 172.16.0.1. This server will be the master.

If it is the first time you start docklet, run bin/docklet-master init to init and start docklet master. Otherwise, run bin/docklet-master start, which will start master in recovery mode in background using conf/docklet.conf. (Note: if docklet will run in the distributed gateway mode and recovery mode, please start the workers first.)

Please fill the USER_IP and USER_PORT in conf/docklet.conf, it is the ip and port of user server. By default, it is localhost and 9100

You can check the daemon status by running bin/docklet-master status

The master logs are in FS_PREFIX/local/log/docklet-master.log and docklet-web.log.

worker

Worker needs a basefs image to create containers.

You can create such an image with lxc-create -n test -t download, then copy the rootfs to FS_PREFIX/local, and rename rootfs to basefs.

Note the jupyerhub package must be installed for this image. And the start script tools/start_jupyter.sh should be placed at basefs/home/jupyter.

You can check and run tools/update-basefs.sh to update basefs.

Run bin/docklet-worker start, will start worker in background.

You can check the daemon status by running bin/docklet-worker status.

The log is in FS_PREFIX/local/log/docklet-worker.log.

Currently, the worker must be run after the master has been started.

Usage

Open a browser, visiting the address specified by PORTAL_URL , e.g., http://docklet.info/

That is it.

Contribute

Contributions are welcome. Please check devguide