Using configdrive cloud-config to execute commands post server creation

Posted on 20th October 2015 by azio

A lot of customers might want to setup automation, for installing common packages and making configurations for vanilla images. One way to provide that automation is to use configdrive which allows you to execute commands post server creation, as well as to install certain packages that are required.

The good thing about using this is you can get a server up and running with a single line of automation, and of course your configuration file (which contains all the automation). Here is the steps you need to do it, and it is actually really rather very simple!

Step 1. Create Automation File .cloud-config

#cloud-config

packages:

 - apache2
 - php5
 - php5-mysql
 - mysql-server

runcmd:

 - wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz -P /tmp/
 - tar -zxf /tmp/latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/
 - mysql -e "create database wordpress; create user 'wpuser'@'localhost' identified by 'changemetoo'; grant all privileges on wordpress . \* to 'wpuser'@'localhost'; flush privileges;"
 - mysql -e "drop database test; drop user 'test'@'localhost'; flush privileges;"
 - mysqladmin -u root password 'changeme'

Install apache2, php5, php-mysql, mysqlserver, download wordpress to /tmp and then extract it into main /var/www folder. Create the wordpress database and user name.

Step 2: Create server using cloud-config in Supernova via the Rackspace API
(not hard! easy!)

supernova customer boot --config-drive=true --flavor performance1-1 --image 09de0a66-3156-48b4-90a5-1cf25a905207 --user-data cloud-config testing-configdrive


+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Property                             | Value                                                                         |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| OS-DCF:diskConfig                    | MANUAL                                                                        |
| OS-EXT-STS:power_state               | 0                                                                             |
| OS-EXT-STS:task_state                | scheduling                                                                    |
| OS-EXT-STS:vm_state                  | building                                                                      |
| RAX-PUBLIC-IP-ZONE-ID:publicIPZoneId |                                                                               |
| accessIPv4                           |                                                                               |
| accessIPv6                           |                                                                               |
| adminPass                            | SECUREPASSWORDHERE                                                            |
| config_drive                         | True                                                                          |
| created                              | 2015-10-20T11:10:23Z                                                          |
| flavor                               | 1 GB Performance (performance1-1)                                             |
| hostId                               |                                                                               |
| id                                   | ef084d0f-70cc-4366-b348-daf987909899                                          |
| image                                | Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) (PVHVM) (09de0a66-3156-48b4-90a5-1cf25a905207) |
| key_name                             | -                                                                             |
| metadata                             | {}                                                                            |
| name                                 | testing-configdrive                                                           |
| progress                             | 0                                                                             |
| status                               | BUILD                                                                         |
| tenant_id                            | 10000000                                                                      |
| updated                              | 2015-10-20T11:10:24Z                                                          |
| user_id                              | 05b18e859cad42bb9a5a35ad0a6fba2f                                              |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

In my case my supernova was setup already, however I have another article on how to setup supernova on this site, just take a look there for how to install it. MY supernova configuration looks like (with the API KEY removed ofcourse!)

[customer]
OS_AUTH_URL=https://identity.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0/
OS_AUTH_SYSTEM=rackspace
#OS_COMPUTE_API_VERSION=1.1
NOVA_RAX_AUTH=1
OS_REGION_NAME=LON
NOVA_SERVICE_NAME=cloudServersOpenStack
OS_PASSWORD=90bb3pd0a7MYMOCKAPIKEYc419572678abba136a2
OS_USERNAME=mycloudusername
OS_TENANT_NAME=100000

OS_TENANT_NAME is your customer number, take it from the url in mycloud.rackspace.com after logging on. OS_PASSWORD is your API KEY, get it from the account settings url in mycloud.rackspace.co.uk, and your OS_USERNAME, that is your username that you use to login to the Rackspace mycloud control panel. Simples!

Step 3: Confirm your server built as expected

root@testing-configdrive:~# ls /tmp
latest.tar.gz

root@testing-configdrive:~# ls /var/www/wordpress
index.php    readme.html      wp-admin            wp-comments-post.php  wp-content   wp-includes        wp-load.php   wp-mail.php      wp-signup.php     xmlrpc.php
license.txt  wp-activate.php  wp-blog-header.php  wp-config-sample.php  wp-cron.php  wp-links-opml.php  wp-login.php  wp-settings.php  wp-trackback.php

In my case, I noticed that everything went fine and ‘wordpress’ installed to /var/www just fine. But what if I wanted wordpress www dir configured to html by default? That’s pretty easy. It’s just an extra.

mv /var/www/html /var/www/html_old
mv /var/www/wordpress /var/www/html

So lets add that to our automation script:

#cloud-config

packages:

 - apache2
 - php5
 - php5-mysql
 - mysql-server

runcmd:

 - wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz -P /tmp/
 - tar -zxf /tmp/latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/; mv /var/www/html /var/www/html_old; mv /var/www/wordpress /var/www/html
 - mysql -e "create database wordpress; create user 'wpuser'@'localhost' identified by 'changemetoo'; grant all privileges on wordpress . \* to 'wpuser'@'localhost'; flush privileges;"
 - mysql -e "drop database test; drop user 'test'@'localhost'; flush privileges;"
 - mysqladmin -u root password 'changeme'

Job done. Just a case of re-running the command now:

supernova customer boot --config-drive=true --flavor performance1-1 --image 09de0a66-3156-48b4-90a5-1cf25a905207 --user-data cloud-config testing-configdrive

And then checking that our wordpress website loads correctly without any additional configuration or having to login to the machine! Not bad automation thar.

I could have quite easily achieved something like this by using the API directly. No supernova and no filesystem. Just the raw command! Yeah that’d be better than not bad!

Creating Post BUILD Automation thru API via CURL

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1. Prepare your execution script by converting it to BASE_64 character encoding

Unencoded Script:

#cloud-config

packages:

 - apache2
 - php5
 - php5-mysql
 - mysql-server

runcmd:

 - wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz -P /tmp/
 - tar -zxf /tmp/latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/; mv /var/www/html /var/www/html_old; mv /var/www/wordpress /var/www/html
 - mysql -e "create database wordpress; create user 'wpuser'@'localhost' identified by 'changemetoo'; grant all privileges on wordpress . \* to 'wpuser'@'localhost'; flush privileges;"
 - mysql -e "drop database test; drop user 'test'@'localhost'; flush privileges;"
 - mysqladmin -u root password 'changeme'

Encoded Script:

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

Step 2: Get Authorization token from identity API endpoint

Command:


$ curl -s https://identity.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0/tokens -X 'POST'        -d '{"auth":{"passwordCredentials":{"username":"adambull", "password":"superBRAIN%!7912105!"}}}'        -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Response:

{"access":{"token":{"id":"AAD4gu67KlOPQeRSTJVC_8MLrTomBCxN6HdmVhlI4y9SiOa-h-Ytnlls2dAJo7wa60E9nQ9Se0uHxgJuHayVPEssmIm--MOCKTOKEN_EXAMPLE-0Wv5n0ZY0A","expires":"2015-10-21T15:06:44.577Z"

It’s also possible to use your API Key to retrieve the TOKEN ID used by API:
(if you don’t like using your control panel password!)

curl -s https://identity.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0/tokens -X 'POST' \
       -d '{"auth":{"RAX-KSKEY:apiKeyCredentials":{"username":"yourUserName", "apiKey":"yourApiKey"}}}' \
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" | python -m json.tool

Step 3: Construct Script to Execute Command directly thru API


#!/bin/sh

# Your Rackspace ACCOUNT DDI, look for a number like below when you login to the Rackspace mycloud controlpanel
account='10000000'

# Using the token that was returned to us in step 2
token="AAD4gu6FH-KoLCKiPWpqHONkCqGJ0YiDuO6yvQG4J1jRSjcQoZSqRK94u0jaYv5BMOCKTOKENpMsI3NEkjNqApipi0Lr2MFLjw"

# London Datacentre Endpoint, could by SYD, IAD, ORD, DFW etc
curl -v https://lon.servers.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2/$account/servers \
       -X POST \
       -H "X-Auth-Project-Id: $account" \
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
       -H "Accept: application/json" \
       -H "X-Auth-Token: $token" \
       -d '{"server": {"name": "testing-cloud-init-api", "imageRef": "09de0a66-3156-48b4-90a5-1cf25a905207", "flavorRef": "general1-1", "config_drive": "true", "user_data": "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"}}' \
      | python -m json.tool

Zomg what does this mean?

X-Auth-Token: is just the header that is sent to authorise your request. You got the token using your mycloud username and password, or mycloud username and API key in step 2.
ImageRef: this is just the ID assigned to the base image of Ubuntu LTS 14.04. Take a look below at all the different images you can use (and the image id of each):

$ supernova customer image-list

| ade87903-9d82-4584-9cc1-204870011de0 | Arch 2015.7 (PVHVM)                                          | ACTIVE |                                      |
| fdaf64c7-d9f3-446c-bd7c-70349305ae91 | CentOS 5 (PV)                                                | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 21612eaf-a350-4047-b06f-6bb8a8a7bd99 | CentOS 6 (PV)                                                | ACTIVE |                                      |
| fabe045f-43f8-4991-9e6c-5cabd617538c | CentOS 6 (PVHVM)                                             | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 6595f1b7-e825-4bd2-addc-c7b1c803a37f | CentOS 7 (PVHVM)                                             | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 2c12f6da-8540-40bc-b974-9a72040173e0 | CoreOS (Alpha)                                               | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 8dc7d5d8-4ad4-41b6-acf1-958dfeadcb17 | CoreOS (Beta)                                                | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 415ca2e6-df92-44e6-ba95-8ee36b436b24 | CoreOS (Stable)                                              | ACTIVE |                                      |
| eaaf94d8-55a6-4bfa-b0a8-473febb012dc | Debian 7 (Wheezy) (PVHVM)                                    | ACTIVE |                                      |
| c3aacaf9-8d1e-4d41-bb47-045fbc392a1c | Debian 8 (Jessie) (PVHVM)                                    | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 081a8b12-515c-41c9-8ce4-13139e1904f7 | Debian Testing (Stretch) (PVHVM)                             | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 498c59a0-3c26-4357-92c0-dd938baca3db | Debian Unstable (Sid) (PVHVM)                                | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 46975098-7799-4e72-8ae0-d6ef9d2d26a1 | Fedora 21 (PVHVM)                                            | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 0976b31e-f6d7-4d74-81e9-007fca25067e | Fedora 22 (PVHVM)                                            | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 7a1cf8de-7721-4d56-900b-1e65def2ada5 | FreeBSD 10 (PVHVM)                                           | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 7451d607-426d-416f-8d29-97e57f6f3ad5 | Gentoo 15.3 (PVHVM)                                          | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 79436148-753f-41b7-aee9-5acbde16582c | OpenSUSE 13.2 (PVHVM)                                        | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 05dd965d-84ce-451b-9ca1-83a134e523c3 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (PV)                              | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 783f71f4-d2d8-4d38-b2e1-8c916de79a38 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (PV)                              | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 5176fde9-e9d6-4611-9069-1eecd55df440 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (PVHVM)                           | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 92f8a8b8-6019-4c27-949b-cf9910b84ffb | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (PVHVM)                           | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 36076d08-3e8b-4436-9253-7a8868e4f4d7 | Scientific Linux 6 (PVHVM)                                   | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 6118e449-3149-475f-bcbb-99d204cedd56 | Scientific Linux 7 (PVHVM)                                   | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 656e65f7-6441-46e8-978d-0d39beaaf559 | Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) (PV)                     | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 973775ab-0653-4ef8-a571-7a2777787735 | Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) (PVHVM)                  | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 5ed162cc-b4eb-4371-b24a-a0ae73376c73 | Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) (PV)                          | ACTIVE |                                      |
| ***09de0a66-3156-48b4-90a5-1cf25a905207*** | Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) (PVHVM)                       | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 658a7d3b-4c58-4e29-b339-2509cca0de10 | Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) (PVHVM)                          | ACTIVE |                                      |
| faad95b7-396d-483e-b4ae-77afec7e7097 | Vyatta Network OS 6.7R9                                      | ACTIVE |                                      |
| ee71e392-12b0-4050-b097-8f75b4071831 | Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1                                   | ACTIVE |                                      |
| 5707f82f-43f0-41e0-8e51-bfb597852825 | Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 + SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 Standard | ACTIVE |                                      |
| b684e5a0-11a8-433e-a4b8-046137783e1b | Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 + SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 Web      | ACTIVE |                                      |
| d16fd3df-3b24-49ee-ae6a-317f450006e7 | Windows Server 2012                                          | ACTIVE |                                      |
| f495b41d-07e1-44c5-a3e8-65c4412a7eb8 | Windows Server 2012 + SQL Server 2012 SP1 Standard           | ACTIVE |                                      |

flavorRef: is simply referring to what server type to start up, it’s pretty darn simple

$ supernova lon flavor-list

+------------------+-------------------------+-----------+------+-----------+------+-------+-------------+-----------+
| ID               | Name                    | Memory_MB | Disk | Ephemeral | Swap | VCPUs | RXTX_Factor | Is_Public |
+------------------+-------------------------+-----------+------+-----------+------+-------+-------------+-----------+
| 2                | 512MB Standard Instance | 512       | 20   | 0         |      | 1     |             | N/A       |
| 3                | 1GB Standard Instance   | 1024      | 40   | 0         |      | 1     |             | N/A       |
| 4                | 2GB Standard Instance   | 2048      | 80   | 0         |      | 2     |             | N/A       |
| 5                | 4GB Standard Instance   | 4096      | 160  | 0         |      | 2     |             | N/A       |
| 6                | 8GB Standard Instance   | 8192      | 320  | 0         |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| 7                | 15GB Standard Instance  | 15360     | 620  | 0         |      | 6     |             | N/A       |
| 8                | 30GB Standard Instance  | 30720     | 1200 | 0         |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| compute1-15      | 15 GB Compute v1        | 15360     | 0    | 0         |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| compute1-30      | 30 GB Compute v1        | 30720     | 0    | 0         |      | 16    |             | N/A       |
| compute1-4       | 3.75 GB Compute v1      | 3840      | 0    | 0         |      | 2     |             | N/A       |
| compute1-60      | 60 GB Compute v1        | 61440     | 0    | 0         |      | 32    |             | N/A       |
| compute1-8       | 7.5 GB Compute v1       | 7680      | 0    | 0         |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| general1-1       | 1 GB General Purpose v1 | 1024      | 20   | 0         |      | 1     |             | N/A       |
| general1-2       | 2 GB General Purpose v1 | 2048      | 40   | 0         |      | 2     |             | N/A       |
| general1-4       | 4 GB General Purpose v1 | 4096      | 80   | 0         |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| general1-8       | 8 GB General Purpose v1 | 8192      | 160  | 0         |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| io1-120          | 120 GB I/O v1           | 122880    | 40   | 1200      |      | 32    |             | N/A       |
| io1-15           | 15 GB I/O v1            | 15360     | 40   | 150       |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| io1-30           | 30 GB I/O v1            | 30720     | 40   | 300       |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| io1-60           | 60 GB I/O v1            | 61440     | 40   | 600       |      | 16    |             | N/A       |
| io1-90           | 90 GB I/O v1            | 92160     | 40   | 900       |      | 24    |             | N/A       |
| memory1-120      | 120 GB Memory v1        | 122880    | 0    | 0         |      | 16    |             | N/A       |
| memory1-15       | 15 GB Memory v1         | 15360     | 0    | 0         |      | 2     |             | N/A       |
| memory1-240      | 240 GB Memory v1        | 245760    | 0    | 0         |      | 32    |             | N/A       |
| memory1-30       | 30 GB Memory v1         | 30720     | 0    | 0         |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| memory1-60       | 60 GB Memory v1         | 61440     | 0    | 0         |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| performance1-1   | 1 GB Performance        | 1024      | 20   | 0         |      | 1     |             | N/A       |
| performance1-2   | 2 GB Performance        | 2048      | 40   | 20        |      | 2     |             | N/A       |
| performance1-4   | 4 GB Performance        | 4096      | 40   | 40        |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| performance1-8   | 8 GB Performance        | 8192      | 40   | 80        |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| performance2-120 | 120 GB Performance      | 122880    | 40   | 1200      |      | 32    |             | N/A       |
| performance2-15  | 15 GB Performance       | 15360     | 40   | 150       |      | 4     |             | N/A       |
| performance2-30  | 30 GB Performance       | 30720     | 40   | 300       |      | 8     |             | N/A       |
| performance2-60  | 60 GB Performance       | 61440     | 40   | 600       |      | 16    |             | N/A       |
| performance2-90  | 90 GB Performance       | 92160     | 40   | 900       |      | 24    |             | N/A       |
+------------------+-------------------------+-----------+------+-----------+------+-------+-------------+-----------+

Restarting a Xen Server that is out of memory thru Hypervisor

Posted on 14th October 2015 by azio

So, you have a xen server, but the virtual machine is not responding, what do you do? You login to the hypervisor and fix it, all right!

Please note for sanitation that random strings have been used instead of real life UUID.

Step 1: Connect Hypervisor

ssh root@somehypervisoriporhostname

Step 2: Check Running Tasks (Task List)

[root@10-1-1-1 ~]# xe task-list
uuid ( RO)                : ff9ca1a3-fc29-a245-1f28-2adc646114a2
          name-label ( RO): Async.VM.clean_reboot
    name-description ( RO):
              status ( RO): pending
            progress ( RO): 0.371


uuid ( RO)                : aff56852-6db4-1ab3-b2b1-33e48c797dbb
          name-label ( RO): Connection to VM console
    name-description ( RO):
              status ( RO): pending
            progress ( RO): 0.000


[root@10-1-1-1 ~]# xe task-list params=all
uuid ( RO)                  : ff9ca1a3-fc29-a245-1f28-2adc646114a2
            name-label ( RO): Async.VM.clean_reboot
      name-description ( RO):
            subtask_of ( RO): 
              subtasks ( RO):
           resident-on ( RO): 43b6096b-09cd-4890-b51b-56e50de573ff
                status ( RO): pending
              progress ( RO): 0.372
                  type ( RO): 
                result ( RO):
               created ( RO): 20151014T15:01:17Z
              finished ( RO): 19700101T00:00:00Z
            error_info ( RO):
    allowed_operations ( RO): Cancel


uuid ( RO)                  : aff56852-6db4-1ab3-b2b1-33e48c797dbb
            name-label ( RO): Connection to VM console
      name-description ( RO):
            subtask_of ( RO): 
              subtasks ( RO):
           resident-on ( RO): 43b6096b-09cd-4890-b51b-56e50de573ff
                status ( RO): pending
              progress ( RO): 0.000
                  type ( RO): 
                result ( RO):
               created ( RO): 20151014T15:57:48Z
              finished ( RO): 19700101T00:00:00Z
            error_info ( RO):
    allowed_operations ( RO):

I could see that there were two tasks running on this slice:

[root@10-1-1-1 ~]# xe vm-list name-label=slice10011111
uuid ( RO)           : 4a9a5dfb-3c4a-b2bb-be7b-db3be6297fff
     name-label ( RW): slice10011111
    power-state ( RO): running

This told me that the slice was running OK. So I am going to cancel the task pending for it


$ xe task-cancel uuid=ff9ca1a3-fc29-a245-1f28-2adc646114a2

Shutdown the server (HALT IT)


[root@10-1-1-1 ~]# xe vm-shutdown --force uuid=4a9a5dfb-3c4a-b2bb-be7b-db3be6297fff
[root@10-1-1-1 ~]# xe vm-list name-label=slice10011111
uuid ( RO)           : 4a9a5dfb-3c4a-b2bb-be7b-db3be6297fff
     name-label ( RW): slice10011111
    power-state ( RO): halted

Start the Virtual Machine

[root@10-1-1-1 ~]# xe vm-start uuid=4a9a5dfb-3c4a-b2bb-be7b-db3be6297fff

At the end I wanted to check if the instance was still causing a large swap as it was when it was running out of memory! That is the reason why I had to start the server.

(echo "Slice IO_Read IO_Write Total"; (for uuid in $(xe vbd-list params=uuid | awk '$5{print $5}'); do xe vbd-param-list uuid=$uuid | grep -P "^\s*(io_|vm-name-label|vdi-name-label|vdi-uuid|device)" | awk '{if($1=="vdi-uuid") {hasswap="no";vdi_uuid=$4;}}{if($1=="vm-name-label") name=$4; if($1=="vdi-name-label") {if ($4 ~ /swap/) {hasswap="yes";name=name"-swap"}; if ($5 ~ /ephemeral/) name=name"-eph";} if($1=="device"){if($4=="hda" || $4=="xvda") name=name"-root"; if($4=="xvdc" && hasswap=="no") {vdicmd="xe vdi-list uuid="vdi_uuid" params=name-description --minimal | grep swap >> /dev/null"; swpname=system(vdicmd); if(swpname==0) name=name"-swap"};} if($1=="io_read_kbs") ioread=$4; if($1=="io_write_kbs") iowrite=$4}END{if(substr(name,0,9)!="XenServer") print name" "ioread" "iowrite" "ioread+iowrite}'; done) | sort -k4n) | column -t

Job done!

Install and Configure Rackspace cloud backup Agent manually

Posted on 21st September 2015 by azio

Installing the cloud backup agent manually is quite easy. First take a look at http://meta.packages.cloudmonitoring.rackspace.com/ for your operating system distribution. In my case it’s Debian Wheezy (release 7).

From time to time the commands change, so always check the reference first (link above) before running the below command

wget http://meta.packages.cloudmonitoring.rackspace.com/debian-wheezy-x86_64/rackspace-cloud-monitoring-meta-stable_1.0_all.deb
dpkg -i rackspace-cloud-monitoring-meta-stable_1.0_all.deb
apt-get update
apt-get install rackspace-monitoring-agent

That’s it your done! Rackspace Cloud Backup agent is now manually running.

To be sure it is installed successfully and is starting up on boot, run a reboot and then verify in the rackspace control panel that it is running.

reboot

If you at any point want to remove the monitoring agent, you can run:

apt-get remove rackspace-monitoring-agent

again confirming in the rackspace mycloud control panel that the service is no longer running:

Live Migrating a server with the openstack API

Posted on 16th September 2015 by azio

Yesterday was a very long night, I didn’t leave work till 9:30pm. It was because I was trying to figure out how to live migrate a cloud server from one hypervisor to another with a targeted destination. This ensures that any customer using the openstack for cloud reaches a hypervisor in the same cell:

 
supernova lon live-migration --block-migrate uuidgoeshere c-10-1-1-1

Where ‘uuidgoeshere’ is the uuid of the server to migrate, and c-10-1-1-1 is the target of the hypervisor. It was as simple as that, during the live migration, only a few packets are dropped by the server. This ensures very good continuity and minimizes the disruption that would have otherwise been experienced had you imaged, and then rebuilt the server that way! In our case, the lon part is just the configuration file used by supernova. supernova is a wrapper for nova.

Using CURL to get Autoscale groups via Openstack API

Posted on 16th September 2015 by azio

So it has been a little while since I last posted something. Recently I have been learning the openstack API in cloud environments at Rackspace. We had a customer who wanted to check the servers in an autoscaling group. This is really easy and API is not as difficult as it may sound, and it was simply by running a:

curl -X GET "X-Auth-Token: $token" https://lon.autoscale.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/$ddi/groups/$uuid | python -mjson.tool

What the above command does is simply provide the header X-Auth-Token, which is the users API Key from the control panel, or an impersonation key. You can set the $token, $ddi and $uuid variables used by the command, where the $ddi is the Rackspace customer account number and $uuid is the id of the autoscaler.

All the API calls are pretty much as simple as that! Nothing too crazy hard, simples!

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