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Virtual Machines - LEAP Platform Documentation
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<h1>Virtual Machines</h1>

<div id='summary'>Running LEAP platform on remote virtual machines</div>
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<div id='content-box'>
<div id="TOC"><ol>
  <li>
    <a href="virtual-machines/index.html#introduction">Introduction</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="virtual-machines/index.html#configuration">Configuration</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="virtual-machines/index.html#usage">Usage</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="virtual-machines/index.html#keeping-state-synchronized">Keeping State Synchronized</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="virtual-machines/index.html#multiple-authentication-profiles">Multiple authentication profiles</a>
  </li>
</ol></div>

<h2><a name="introduction"></a>Introduction</h2>

<p>You can use the <code>leap</code> command line to easily remote virtual machines.</p>

<p>Note: there are two types of virtual machines that <code>leap</code> can handle:</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>Local</strong> virtual machines running with vagrant, for use in testing.</li>
<li><strong>Remote</strong> virtual machines hosted by a cloud provider like AWS or Rackspace.</li>
</ul>


<p>This guide is for &ldquo;remote virtual machines&rdquo;. For &ldquo;local virtual machines&rdquo; see <a href="../tutorials/vagrant.html">Vagrant</a>.</p>

<p>Currently, only Amazon AWS is supported as a cloud provider.</p>

<h2><a name="configuration"></a>Configuration</h2>

<p>To get started with virtual machines, you must configure a <code>cloud.json</code> file with your API credentials for the virtual machine vendor. This file lives in the root of your provider directory.</p>

<p>For example:</p>

<pre><code>{
  "my_aws": {
    "api": "aws",
    "vendor": "aws",
    "auth": {
      "region": "us-west-2",
      "aws_access_key_id": "xxxx my key id xxxx",
      "aws_secret_access_key": "xxxx my access key xxxx"
    }
  }
}
</code></pre>

<p>This will configure a cloud &ldquo;authentication profile&rdquo; called &ldquo;my_aws&rdquo;. This profile will be used by default if there is only one. See below for managing multiple authentication profiles.</p>

<p><em>Required cloud.json properties</em></p>

<ul>
<li><code>$profile</code>: In this case, &lsquo;my_aws&rsquo;.</li>
<li><code>$profile.api</code>: For now, must always be &ldquo;aws&rdquo;.</li>
<li><code>$profile.vendor</code>: For now, must always be &ldquo;aws&rdquo;.</li>
<li><code>$profile.auth</code>: API specific authentication configuration for this profile. In the case of AWS, it must include <code>auth.region</code>, <code>auth.aws_access_key_id</code>, and <code>aws_secret_access_key</code>.</li>
</ul>


<p><em>Additional cloud.json properties</em></p>

<p>In addition to required configuration properties, these are optional:</p>

<ul>
<li><code>$profile.default_image</code>: What image to use for new nodes by default. Generally, you should not specify this, because it will automatically select the right Debian image for your region. A node can override this with the property <code>vm.image</code>.</li>
<li><code>$profile.default_options</code>: This is passed directly to the cloud API, and so is specific to whichever API you are using. The node can override this with the property <code>vm.options</code>.</li>
</ul>


<p>A more complete example <code>cloud.json</code>:</p>

<pre><code>{
  "my_aws": {
    "api": "aws",
    "vendor": "aws",
    "auth": {
      "region": "us-west-2",
      "aws_access_key_id": "xxxx my key id xxxx",
      "aws_secret_access_key": "xxxx my access key xxxx"
    },
    "default_image": "ami-98e114f8",
    "default_options": {
      "InstanceType": "t2.nano"
    }
  }
}
</code></pre>

<p>See also:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/">Available instance types for AWS</a></li>
</ul>


<h2><a name="usage"></a>Usage</h2>

<p>See <code>leap help vm</code> for a description of all the possible commands.</p>

<p>In order to be able to create new virtual machine instances, you need to register your SSH key with the VM vendor.</p>

<pre><code>leap vm key-register
</code></pre>

<p>You only have to do this once, and only people who will be creating new VM instances need to do this.</p>

<p>Once you have done that, you just <code>leap vm add</code> to create the virtual machine and then <code>leap vm start</code> to actually boot it.</p>

<pre><code>leap vm add mynode
leap vm start mynode
</code></pre>

<p>You can specify seed values to <code>leap vm add</code>. For example:</p>

<pre><code>leap vm add mynode services:webapp tags:seattle vm.options.InstanceType:t2.small
</code></pre>

<p>Check to see what the status is of all VMs:</p>

<pre><code>leap vm status
</code></pre>

<p>If it looks good, you can now deploy to the new server:</p>

<pre><code>leap node init mynode
leap deploy mynode
</code></pre>

<p>To stop the VM:</p>

<pre><code>leap vm stop mynode
</code></pre>

<p>To destroy the VM and clean up its storage space:</p>

<pre><code>leap vm rm mynode
</code></pre>

<p>In general, you should remove VMs instead of stopping them, unless you plan on stopping the VM for a short amount of time. A stopped VM will still use disk space and still incur charges.</p>

<h2><a name="keeping-state-synchronized"></a>Keeping State Synchronized</h2>

<p>The LEAP platform stores all its state information in flat static files. The virtual machine vendor, however, also has its own state.</p>

<p>On the provider side, VM state is stored in node configuration files in <code>nodes/*.json</code>. Of particular importance are the properties <code>ip_address</code> and <code>vm.id</code>.</p>

<p>Most of the time, you should not have any trouble: the <code>leap vm</code> commands will keep things in sync. However, if the state of your configuration files gets out of sync with the state of the virtual machines, it can cause problems.</p>

<p>The command <code>leap vm status</code> will warn you whenever it detects a problem and it will usually propose a fix.</p>

<p>Typically, the fix is to manually update the binding between a local node configuration and the running remote virtual machine, like so:</p>

<pre><code>leap vm bind NODE_NAME VM_ID
</code></pre>

<h2><a name="multiple-authentication-profiles"></a>Multiple authentication profiles</h2>

<p>If you have multiple profiles configured in <code>cloud.json</code>, you can specify which one you want to use:</p>

<ul>
<li>Set the <code>vm.auth</code> property in the node configuration to match the name of the authentication profile.</li>
<li>Or, pass <code>--auth PROFILE_NAME</code> on the command line.</li>
</ul>


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