Configure Google Cloud Platform Cloud Bursting

Create a GCP Project so that you can create the necessary cloud components for cloud bursting.

1. Login to the GCP console.
2. Click the project selector menu.
3. Click NEW PROJECT.
4. For Project Name, enter a name for the project.
   The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., pc_cloudproject.
5. Click CREATE.
   It may take a few moments to create the project.
6. Using a browser, navigate to the following URL: https://console.developers.google.com/apis/library/compute.googleapis.com?project=PROJECTNAME
   where PROJECTNAME is the name of the project.
7. Click Enable.
   Note: If you have administrator permissions, you can navigate to the project from the notification and click Enable on Compute Engine API to enable the billing API.

Create a Google Cloud Platform service account so that you can later create a cloud account in Control.

1. Login to the GCP console.
2. Click located in the upper left-hand corner of the web page.
3. Click IAM & Admin > Service accounts.
4. Click CREATE SERVICE ACCOUNT.
5. Enter the following to create a service account:
   1. For Service account name, enter a name for the service account.
      The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., pc-service-account.
   2. Click CREATE AND CONTINUE.
   3. For Grant this service account access to the project, click CONTINUE.
   4. For Grant users access to this service account, choose the users you want to add. Add a user for the service account admins role and click DONE.
   5. Click IAM & Admin > Service accounts.
   6. For the service account you created, click the Actions menu and click Keys.
   7. Click ADD KEY and select Create New Key.
   8. For Key type, enable JSON.
   9. Click CREATE.
   10. Save the JSON file in a secure location.
       The information in this file is used later to add a cloud account to Control.
   11. Click CLOSE.

Add an existing GCP service account to Control so that you can create a cloud bursting scenario or an appliance.

1. Login to Control.
2. Click the Cloud tab.
3. Click Cloud from the Infrastructure menu located on the left-hand side of the web page.
4. Click .
5. Enter the following to add a cloud account:
   1. For Account name, enter any name for the cloud account.
      The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., gcp_cloudaccount.
   2. For Project ID, copy and paste the project_id value from the JSON file.
   3. For Client ID, copy and paste the client_id value from the JSON file.
   4. For Client Mail, copy and paste the client_email value from the JSON file.
   5. For Private Key ID, copy and paste the private_key_id value from the JSON file.
   6. For Private Key, copy and paste the private_key value from the JSON file.
      Important: Do not copy the \n characters at the end of the private_key value.
6. Click Create account.

Create a Virtual Private Network (VPC) in GCP so that you can later create a virtual machine for cloud bursting.

1. Login to the GCP console.
2. Click located in the upper left-hand corner of the web page.
3. Click VPC network > VPC networks.
4. Click CREATE VPC NETWORK.
5. Enter the following to create a VPC:
   1. For Name, enter a name for the VPC.
      The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., bursting-vpc.
   2. In the Subnets section, click the Custom tab under Subnet creation mode.
   3. For Name, enter a name for the subnet.
      The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., bursting-subnet.
   4. For Region, select a Region based on the geographical location of users.
   5. For IP address range, enter an IP address range using CIDR notation
   6. For Private Google access, enable Off.
   7. Click Done.
   8. For Dynamic routing mode, enable Regional.
6. Click Create.
   Creating the VPC network may take some time. Do not proceed until the VPC is created.
7. Select the VPC by clicking on its name.
8. Click the Firewall tab.
9. Click CREATE FIREWALL RULE.
10. Enter the following to create a firewall rule:
    1. For Name, enter a name for the firewall rule.
       The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., ssh-all.
    2. Select the network.
    3. For Direction of Traffic, enable Ingress.
    4. For Action on match, enable Allow.
    5. For Targets, select All instances in the network.
    6. For Source filter, select IP ranges.
    7. For Source IP ranges, enter 0.0.0.0/0.
    8. For Protocols and ports, enable Specified protocols and ports.
    9. Enable tcp.
    10. Enter 22.
11. Click Create.

Create a CentOS 7.3 virtual Machine in GCP.

1. Login to the GCP console.
2. Click located in the upper left-hand corner of the web page.
3. Click Compute Engine > VM instances.
4. Click CREATE INSTANCE.
5. Enter the following to create a virtual machine:
   1. For Name, enter a name for the virtual machine.
      The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., bursting-vm.
   2. For Zone, select a zone that is in the same Region as the subnet of the previously created VPC.
   3. In the Machine type, click the Customize link. Choose a family (Compute Optimised) and then a machine type from the dropdown.

      
      
      Figure 1. Customize the Machine Type

   4. Specify the CPUs, GPUs and RAM.
      Consider the nature of the applications that you plan to deploy on the instance, the number of users that you expect to use the applications, and also how you expect the load to scale in the future. Remember to also factor in the CPU and memory resources that are necessary for the operating system.
   5. For Boot disk, click Change.
   6. Choose CentOS 7.
   7. For Boot disk type, choose one of the following options:
      • Standard persistent disk
      • SSD persistent disk

      Choose SSD for I/O-intensive applications, where low latency and high throughput are critical. For testing, consider Standard persistent disk to keep costs down.

   8. For Size, specify the size of the boot disk.
   9. Click Select.
   10. Under Identity and API access, for Service Account, select No service account.
   11. For Firewall, choose Allow HTTP traffic and Allow HTTPS traffic.
   12. Click the Networking, Disks, security, Management, Sole-Tenancy dropdown to get the list of options available.
   13. Click the Networking section.
   14. Click the default network menu and choose the VPC you created previously.
   15. For Network Service Tier, click Standard.
   16. Click Done.
   17. Delete any default network interfaces that might have been automatically generated.
   18. Click the Security section.
   19. For SSH Keys, copy the SSH public key (i.e., id_rsa.pub) of a user account that exists on your site's PBS Server and paste it. Append ==<username>at the end of your key. e.g. ==centos.
       This user will have sudo rights and will be able to SSH into the VM to install the PBS MoM.
6. Click CREATE.
   Creating the virtual machine may take some time.

Install the PBS MoM on the virtual machine and configure the VM per your site's environment.

1. Login to your site's PBS Server as the user account (public SSH key) provided during the creation of the VM.
2. SSH into the virtual machine using the public IP address of the VM:

   ssh IPV4PublicIP

   where IPV4PublicIP is the public IP address of the virtual machine.

   
   
   Figure 2. Bursting Virtual Machine

3. Enter the command:

   sudo -i

4. Copy the PBS Professional installation package to the VM.
5. Using the PBS Professional Installation and Upgrade Guide, install and configure the PBS Professional MOM.
6. Configure the VM for your site's environment such as mounting file systems, connecting it to the authentication service, installing any applications, etc.
7. Install cloud-init.
8. Connect the VM to your PBS Professional server and submit a job to ensure it is working as expected.

Create an image of the virtual machine configured per your site's requirements. You can choose to keep the image and use it to update your bursting image with patches, new applications etc. You can bring the instance online, patch and then recreate the image at your discretion. The saving in build and management time for the images will offset the additional storage costs.

1. Login to the GCP console.
2. Click located in the upper left-hand corner of the web page.
3. Click Compute Engine > VM instances.
   A list of virtual machines is displayed.
4. Click next to the virtual machine that was created for cloud bursting.

   
   
   Figure 3. Bursting Virtual Machine

5. Click Stop.
   It may take some time for the VM to be stopped. Do not proceed until the VM is stopped.
6. Click Images from the menu located on the left-hand side of the web page.
   CAUTION:

   Do NOT choose Machine images.

   
   
   Figure 4. Images

7. Click CREATE IMAGE.
8. Enter the following to create an image:
   1. For Name, enter a name for the image.
      The name can be anything meaningful to your organization, e.g., bursting-image.
   2. For Source, select Disk.
   3. For Source disk, select the previously created virtual machine.
   4. For Location, select regional to save costs.
9. Click Create.
   It may take some time to create the image. Do not proceed until the image is created.

Create an GCP bursting scenario so that PBS execution nodes can be burst in the cloud.

1. Navigate to the Control browser window.
2. Click the Cloud tab.
3. Click Bursting from the Infrastructure menu located on the left-hand side of the web page.
4. Click Add Bursting Scenario.
5. Enter information about the bursting scenario such as name, cloud provider, cloud account, and geographic location.
   1. For Name, enter a name for the cloud bursting scenario.
   2. For Description, enter a description.
   3. For Cloud Account, choose a previously created GCP cloud account from the list.
   4. For Region, select the same geographic location as was selected for the previously created bursting VPC.
6. Click Next.

Enter information about the GCP resources necessary to burst in the cloud.

7. For Domain name, provide the domain name of your organization for the cloud bursting network.
   altair.com, burst.altair.com
8. For Hostname prefix, enter a prefix for the names of the burst nodes.
   If "node" is entered , the cloud bursting nodes will be available to PBS Professional as node1, node2, node3, etc.
9. Navigate to the cloud provider browser window.
10. Click located in the upper left-hand corner of the web page.
11. Click VPC network > VPC networks.
12. Click the name of the VPC that was created for cloud bursting.
    VPC network details are displayed.
13. Copy the name of the VPC network.
14. Navigate to the Control browser window.
15. For Network name, paste the name of the VPC network copied from GCP.
16. Navigate to the cloud provider browser window.
17. Copy the name of the VPC network subnet.
18. Navigate to the Control browser window.
19. For Subnetwork name, paste the name of the VPC network subnet copied from GCP.
20. Navigate to the cloud provider browser window.
21. Click located in the upper left-hand corner of the web page.
22. Click Compute Engine > Images.
23. Select the image created for cloud bursting.
24. Click Equivalent REST
25. Copy the value for the entry called selfLink.
26. Navigate to the Control browser window.
27. For OS Image URI, paste the link copied from GCP.
28. Enable Add public IP to VMs if you need to connect to the cloud bursting nodes from the internet.
    It is recommended to leave this disabled.
29. For Cloud-init script, click Browse, browse for the startup script file and select it.
    This script will run after a cloud node is burst.
30. Add public SSH keys for any users that you want to have access to the burst nodes:
    1. Login to the PBS Professional Server.
    2. Copy the public SSH key for the user.
       Public key files are usually stored in /.ssh in the user's home directory.
    3. Navigate to the Control browser window.
    4. Click Add to add the public key.
    5. For Public SSH keys, paste the public SSH key.
    6. Repeat steps a through e to add additional public SSH keys.
    The public keys are copied to each burst node for secure connectivity.
31. For Idle time before unbursting, enter the minimum time that a cloud node can be idle before it is unburst.

    It is expressed as an integer whose units are in seconds.

32. For Tags, enter a key-value pair to add a label to the cloud node and press ENTER.
    A tag is a label that is assigned to a cloud node. Tags enable cloud nodes to be categorized in different ways, for example, by purpose, owner, or environment.
    The key-value pair must be entered as key:value. The key must be less than 36 characters and the value must be less than 43 characters. The length of both the key + value should be less than 80 characters. Valid values are alphanumeric, dash (-) and an underscore ( _ ).
    Once the tag is added, it will appear within its own bubble.

    
    
    Figure 5. Key-Value Tag

33. Repeat the previous step to add more tags.

    
    
    Figure 6. Additional Tags

    Tip: To remove a tag click on the 'x' located within the tag bubble.
34. Click Next.
35. Click the Select instance types for bursting link.
36. Select the instance types to enable for the bursting scenario by clicking the Enabled checkbox located to the far right of the instance type name.
37. Click Save.
38. Click the Create an API Key/ Token link.
39. For Name, enter a name for the token.
40. For Expiration date, use the calendar widget to specify the expiration date.
41. Click Add Token.
    An API key is generated and displayed.
42. Copy and save this API key.
    The API key is only displayed once. It is pasted in the configuration file used to configure the cloud bursting hook.
43. Click Close.
44. Enable the bursting scenario by clicking the slider at the top next to the scenario title.
    If an attempt is made to burst nodes with a disabled instance type, the node is not burst and the below message is displayed in the PBS Server logs (if bursting through PBS), the Cloud logs and through the Cloud component user interface.

    TYPE is not enabled

    Where TYPE is the instance type used when attempting to burst the node.