Setup

learners

Setup

Infomaniak

Account and project

Create an Infomaniak account by following “Get started for free” from the Infomaniak entry page.

Free resources

Note that in addition to cloud computing resources, which we will use for this tutorial, Infomaniak also offers a comprehensive set of collaborative tools (including e-mail, cloud storage, and many other services) for free, permanently.

To start the free trial for cloud resources (300 EUR/CHF), you need to order a “public cloud”. A credit card number (or Twint in Switzerland) is needed. You will not be charged during the free trial.

Working in a group

If you plan to work in a group, one of the group can order the “public cloud” and create the recourses within, and others can be added as users. They will be asked to create an Infomaniak account, but they do not need to start their free trial.

In you work as a user, you can go directly to Adding users.

Choose “Cloud Computing” from the left bar and select “Public Cloud”.

A screenshot from the Cloud Computing dashboard initial page.

Click on “Order a Public Cloud” and give it a name. In the following steps:

a phone number is requested to confirm your identity.
you will be shown a number to call for verification (the confirmation is automatic when you call).
provide an address.
skip the suggested back-up option.
in the final step, a credit card is requested (there are no charges for an empty project).

Creating your “Public Cloud” might take a while. First, after some time after placing the order, a request for ID verification will appear on the Administration console. You will be asked to install Infomaniak Check app on your phone. You will be shown a QR code which you can scan with the app. To identify, you will need to scan your passport or ID card, and take a selfie with that document. Then, once the verification is ready, your project will appear on the Cloud Computing dashboard.

A screenshot from the Cloud Computing dashboard page with the listing.

Trial period

Creating a “Public Cloud” will start your free trial period of three months. No charges occur for a project itself, only for the resources that you will create within. The cost will be deducted from the free credit during the trial period.

Start a project following the Infomaniak instructions.

Products and projects

Note the two layers in the Infomaniak structure. There is the product, in our case the “Public Cloud”, and, below it, the project that we just created. The cloud resources needed in this tutorial are created in the project.

The OpenStack password that you will be asked to define will be needed to access the storage in this tutorial. Do not forget it!

OpenStack access

Once the Public Cloud project has been created, you will find it on your public cloud page.

See the Infomaniak instructions about managing your project, and download the OpenStackRC file to the working area on your computer.

The option for the OpenStackRC file download is visible from the three dots of the OpenStack access listing of the project view.

When prompted, keep the suggested region. The file is named as PCU-XXXXXX-openrc.txt where PCU-XXXXXX is the OpenStack ID of your project.

Adding users

If you work in the group, the owner of the project can add give other people access to the storage area. In the project view, click on “Add an access”

Add users to a project by clicking on “Add an access” in the project view.

You can choose to send the procedure by email, and the new user will create their Infomaniak account. They will then create their own OpenStack access password.

Software setup

Important

In this tutorial, we expect that you will be using a Linux shell: on native Linux, macOS, or through WSL2 on Windows.

Get the code

git clone git@github.com:katilp/infomaniak-cloud-test.git  # or: git clone https://github.com/katilp/infomaniak-cloud-test.git if no SSH key
cd infomaniak-cloud-test

Interacting with storage: openstack and swift

Virtual environment

If you prefer to avoid interference with your usual Python environment, create a virtual environment in your working directory and activate it:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

(venv) in front your prompt indicates that this environment has been activated. The exit command is deactivate.

Install the tools to interact with the storage

pip install python-openstackclient python-swiftclient

The requirements.txt file in the repository contains the Python packages that got installed with the command above and used for testing this lesson. They might be less recent than what you get.

To connect to the project, copy the downloaded PCU-XXXXXX-openrc.txt to your working directory and source it:

source PCU-XXXXXX-openrc.txt

It asks the OpenStack password, which you defined when creating the project.

We will be using object storage in this tutorial. You can check your storage and as it is still empty, you will see something similar to this:

 openstack object store account show
+------------+---------------------------------------+
| Field      | Value                                 |
+------------+---------------------------------------+
| Account    | AUTH_123c4567df4a496e890123456aae9876 |
| Bytes      | 0                                     |
| Containers | 0                                     |
| Objects    | 0                                     |
| properties | quota-bytes='1000000000000'           |
+------------+---------------------------------------+

You can create a storage container named mystorage with

openstack container create mystorage

and list the existing storage containers with

openstack container list

Storage cost

There is a cost for the storage (currently 0.000013 €/GB/hour, i.e. 0.11 €/GB/year to save you the math), but not for an empty container so just creating a storage container does not consume the free credit.

You can find the current prices in the Infomaniak cloud services pricing details.

Kubernetes command-line tool: kubectl

kubectl is the tool to interact with the Kubernetes clusters. Install it either on its own or with Docker Desktop.

Running workflows: Argo CLI

The example processing workflow is defined as an “Argo workflow”. To be able to submit it and follow its progress from your terminal, download Argo command-line interface following these instructions:

curl -sLO "https://github.com/argoproj/argo-workflows/releases/download/v4.0.1/argo-linux-amd64.gz"
gunzip "argo-linux-amd64.gz"
chmod +x "argo-linux-amd64"
sudo mv "./argo-linux-amd64" /usr/local/bin/argo # or without sudo to a path (in your PATH) where you can write

Take note that what is under “Controller and Server” in the instructions will be done once the cluster is available, do not do it yet.

Optional for building a customized CMSSW container image: Docker

This tutorial uses a CMSSW open data container image with the pfnano producer code downloaded and compiled. You do not need to install Docker to use it in the context of this tutorial. You need Docker, if you want to modify the code with your selections and build a new container image.

Next step

Once done, read the Introduction, or continue directly to Storage for the output files.