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Provision of virtual machines (open)

A.Specs

We have setup a XEN hypervisor (geoknow-server.imis.athena-innovation.gr) capable of hosting a group of virtual machines (guests, VMs).
For the moment, the following prebuilt images are supported and provided as a starting point for creating new guests:
  • debian 6.x "squeeze" testing
  • centos 5.9 final
  • centos 6.4 final
The guests have the following specifications
  • (up to) 8 CPU cores
  • (up to) 30 GiB of memory
  • (up to) 60 GiB of private (guest-only) local storage space
  • optional access to shared (between guests, not concurrently) storage space of 1.7TiB
  • a virtual network interface (vif) and an ip address inside the 10.0.1.0/24 local network.
  • access to internet resources through NAT running on the hypervisor

B.How to create a new virtual machine

  • Contact and request a new VM. You should, at least, specify
    your storage needs (do you need access to the 1.7TiB shared storage?), so that the respective block device(s)
    can be attached to the newly created VM.
  • Supply your public-key to be stored on root's account and to be used for later SSH public-key
    authentication. If you dont have such a key (or if you prefer password-based authentication)
    your root account will be assigned a randomly generated password.
  • After successfull creation of the machine, you will be given a TCP port number (>10000) to use in order to connect
    via ordinary SSH shells. Your typical command invocation would be:
ssh -i <private-key-file> -p <port> root@geoknow-server.imis.athena-innovation.gr