Quick Start Guide for Private Cloud (PvC)

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Overview

This guide contains the information to quickly get you started on using Private Cloud Powered by Open Nebula


Terminology:

PvC - Private Cloud service

OpenNebula - the platform used for PvC

eApps Customer Portal - the user interface for your eApps account, which shows services, billing information, etc. http://portal.eapps.com

PvC VPN - the VPN for your PvC service. You can only access your PvC control panel through your VPN.

PvC Control Panel - user interface for administering your PvC resources. Go to https://pvc.eapps.com

VM Control Panel - optional commercial user interface for administering a Virtual Machine (Plesk, cPanel, ISPmanager)

DC - the data center where you purchased resources. You may purchase resources in one, or both, data centers. VXLANs are common across all data centers.

Step-by-step Guide

Pre-requisites

  1. Buy the PvC service from the eApps Store here, if you have not already done so
  2. Setup Remote VPN Access to securely your PvC: Connecting to Your Private Virtual Cloud Management Network VPN
Your Private Virtual Cloud is protected behind a secure VPN. You must first log in to your VPN to access the administrative interface. Once you log in to your VPN, you can administer your PvC resources.

Getting Started with PvC

Obtaining your credentials

Private Cloud is powered by Open Nebula. To access your service connect to your remote access VPN and go to https://pvc.eapps.com. You can obtain your credentials by following these steps:

  1. Log into https://portal.eapps.com
  2. Go to My Cloud --> Private Virtual Cloud
    My Cloud Menu
  3. Click on the Private Cloud service you are looking to manage (you can have multiple PvC services)
    PvC Center
  4. Scroll down, you will find your credentials, including URLs for managing your VPN Server and accessing your Open Nebula control panel. Token is what you need to use as the password.
    PvC Credentials

Login into Open Nebula Control Panel

*Make sure you are connected to your remote access VPN

  1. Go to https://pvc.eapps.com and use the credentials from your eApps Customer Portal
    PvC Login
  2. Once logged in you will find different sections in the Control Panel. The Dashboard will give you a general overview of your resources, networks, and Virtual Machines:
    Open Nebula Dashboard
  3. On the left-hand menu, you can find the different options to manage your Private Cloud. Here is a quick overview:
    Open Nebula Menu
    • Dashboard: Gets you back to the main page
    • Instances: Here you have the VMs menu. You can create your new servers from this section
    • Templates: Allows you to manage the templates available for building new machines. You can add custom templates as needed
    • Networks: Allows you to manage your Public Network, VXLAN private network, and Management Network (For Backups and monitoring from eApps)
    • System: Manage your users and permissions

Important: The user from your eApps Customer Portal is an admin user that has full permissions to your PvC account. You can create new users for your team and manage the permissions for them.

Creating a Virtual Server

  1. Go to Instances --> VM
  2. Click on the Green + button at the top menu: 
  3. Select the Template you want to use:
    Open Nebula VM Templates
    Templates are built for a specific Data Center (DC). You need to select the template for the Data Center you want to use
  4. Enter the VM Name (this will be set as the hostname of the VM), select the capacity (Memory, Cores and Disk), and Enter the Password for the root user. You can also set a custom SSH port for improved security.

  5. Expand the Network Section. You must configure a network Interface for each Network you need to connect to. The following networks are available:
    • Public Network: This will assign a public IP that will be accessible from the Internet
    • Management Network: This network is for Monitoring and Backups. It is exclusively used by eApps for connecting services to the VM and is required if you need backups or monitoring.
    • VXLAN Network: Isolated network dedicated to your PvC. All connections between your own servers need to be performed over the VXLAN. You can add more VXLANs in case you want to isolate different VM deployments
  6. IMPORTANT: VM Templates select by default the first network interface to be the default gateway for the network. Here are some guidelines for selecting the networks for the server:
    1. Required public IP: For a VM to have a public IP assigned and accessible over the internet, please select the first interface of the VM from a Public Network (ATL or RIC). Then select VXLAN and lastly management. The default gateway will be through the public IP.
    2. No public IP required: For a VM that will be accessible only over internal network select first the VXLAN network and then the management network. The VXLAN network will have a default gateway of 172.23.0.1, which is the OPNSense VPN gateway and by default, there is an outgoing NAT that will allow access to the internet from within the VM. 
  7. Once it is expanded you can click on the + Network Interface button:
    Add Network Interface
  8. Scroll down and you will find the list of Available Networks. You need to select the One you want to Add (ATL Public, ATL Management, VPN VXLAN). Note that if you selected a template in ATL you need to select the network from ATL as well. The VXLAN is the same for both DCs. 
    Network Interface (DC)
  9. If you want to connect the VM to multiple Networks, scroll down and click the + Network Interface again
  10. Scroll down and select the Network you want to add
  11. Once you are done adding the interfaces scroll up to the top and click on Create
    Create button
  12. This will get you back to the main VM's Page you will see the status of the VM. You can click on the Refresh Button, the build takes about a minute to complete, once you see the status as Running the VM is ready to be used.


Managing the VM

For managing a VM go to Instances -> VM --> Click on the VM you want to manage. 

For all the VMs you will see a top menu as follows:

Open Nebula VM Controls

From this menu, you can Refresh, Open the Console (VNC), Store disk as a template (only with VM Stopped), Start, Suspend,  top, Reboot, Redeploy (rebuild), change owner, or delete the VM.

To login to the VM, depending on the template used, you may have multiple ways to access the Virtual Machine. For CentOS templates with no control panel, you can access the VM over VNC (console) or SSH. If a Windows template is used, you can also use RDP, or if a template with a Control Panel was used you can use the Control Panel to manage the VM. 

VNC

  1. Go to Instances -> VM
  2. Click on the VM you want to access
  3. Click on the Console Button Console Button and Select VNC, this will open a pop-up window that will give you the console for the server. You can use this to monitor the boot process and also to login into the server over the command line:
    VNC Console

SSH

To securely access servers over SSH you can use the Remote Access VPN and connect to them over the VXLAN network IP. To find out the IP you can follow these steps:

  1. Go to Instances --> VM 
  2. Click on the VM you want to access
  3. Click on the Network Menu
    VXLAN network
  4. The one named VXLAN is the IP you are looking for. In this example, the IP to use for SSH will be 172.23.0.10
  5. Open your favorite terminal. In Windows you can use Putty and in Mac you can use the terminal that comes with the system
  6. SSH to the server using the IP you found and the credentials for the VM.

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