The plugin is updated frequently, this may include breaking changes.

Vagrant G5K Provider

This is a Vagrant 1.2+ plugin that adds an G5K provider to Vagrant, allowing Vagrant to control and provision virtual machines on Grid5000.

More generally any OAR behind ssh that support launching kvm could be used (e.g Igrida). Thus vagrant-oar could be a more appropriate name.

This plugin requires

• Vagrant 1.2+,

---

• Supported operations
• Usage
• Configuration
• Note on the insecure vagrant key
• Note on shared folders
  • Local files
  • Grid5000 home
• Note on disk format and backing strategy
• Note on network configuration
  • NAT networking
  • Bridge networking
• Note on resource demand
• Reservation in advance
• Developping

---

Supported operations

• vagrant destroy
• vagrant halt
• vagrant provision
• vagrant rsync|rsync-auto
• vagrant ssh
• vagrant ssh-config
• vagrant status
• vagrant up

Usage

Install using standard Vagrant 1.1+ plugin installation methods. After installing, vagrant up and specify the g5k provider. An example is shown below.

$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-g5k
$ # (optionnally) get the latest Vagrantfile
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/msimonin/vagrant-g5k/master/Vagrantfile
$ vagrant up --provider=g5k
...

Vagrant requires a box to start with. As a consequence you can add one dummy box with the following command :

 vagrant box add dummy https://github.com/msimonin/vagrant-g5k/raw/master/dummy.box

Configuration

Check the Vagrantfile.

Note on the insecure vagrant key

By default, Vagrant uses a insecure key to connect to the VM. Prior to some operation vagrant will replace this by a generated key. This operation isn't supported by vagrant-g5k thus you need to specify config.vmssh.insert_key = false in the Vagrantfile.

For instance this is needed when using shared folders, hostmanager plugin...

Note on shared folders

Local files

Rsync shared folders are supported. The copy of your local files is hooked in the up phase. After this you can use :

• vagrant rsync to force a synchronization
• vagrant rsync-auto to watch your local modifications

Grid5000 home

Your home on Grid'5000 can be shared with your virtual machine through VirtFS. If the VM supports Plan 9 folder sharing you can connect to the VM and type :

mkdir /g5k
mount -t 9p -o trans=virtio hostshare /g5k -oversion=9p2000.L

Note on disk format and backing strategy

Virtual Machines can be booted either :

• From a qcow2 image stored in the frontend filesystem :

g5k.image = {
  :path     => # path to the image (absolute or reltive to the user home)
  :strategy => # strategy to use (see below)
}

• From a rbd image stored in one of the ceph cluster of Grid'5000.

g5k.image = {
  :pool     => # ceph pool to use 
  :rbd      => # rbd in the pool to use
  :conf     => # path to the ceph config file
  :id       => # id to use to contact ceph
  :strategy => # strategy to use (see below)
}

Once the base image is chosen, you can pick one of the following strategy to back the disk image of the virtual machines :

• copy: will make a full copy of the image in your home directory (resp. in the same pool as the rbd)
• cow: will create a Copy On write image in your home directory (resp. in the same pool as the rbd)
• direct: will use the image directly (you'll need r/w access to the image)
• snapshot: will let kvm create an ephemeral copy on write image.

Use ceph as backing strategy

Vagrant-g5k will look into ~/.ceph/config on each frontend where VMs are started. You can read[1] for further information on how to configure ceph on grid'5000.

[1] : https://www.grid5000.fr/mediawiki/index.php/Ceph

Note on network configuration

Two networking modes are supported :

NAT networking

VMs traffic is NATed to the outside world. The outside world can access the VMs on dedicated ports that are mapped in the host of Grid'5000.

config.vm.provider "g5k" do |g5k|
  [...]
  g5k.net = {
    :type  => "nat",
    :ports => ["2222-:22", "8080-":80]
  }
end

e.g : Assuming parapluie-1.rennes.grid5000.fr hosts the VM. A SSH tunnel from your local machine to parapluie-1.rennes.grid5000.fr:8080 will be forwarded to the port 80 of the VM.

Bridge networking

VMs are given an IP from a Grid'5000 subnet. They can thus communicate with each others using their IPs.

config.vm.provider "g5k" do |g5k|
  [...]
  g5k.net = {
    :type => "bridge"
  }
end

Due to the dynamic nature of the subnet reserved on Grid'5000, IPs of the VMs will change accross reboots a /18 is reserved but only the first 1024 ips are reserved for the VMs. That means you can use the remaining ips without any conflict.

Note on resource demand

CPU and memory demand can be ajusted with the following in your Vagrantfile.

config.vm.provider "g5k" do |g5k|
  [...]
  g5k.resource = {
    :cpu => 2,
    :mem => 4096
  }
end

You can use :cpu => -1 to express that you want all the cpu of the reserved node (but not necesseraly all the memory). Similarly :mem => -1 will give you all the memory available on the reserved node. These are the default values.

Reservation in advance

If you plan to use a reservation or if you expect all your VMs to be ready almost on the same time you can use a job container (see: https://www.grid5000.fr/mediawiki/index.php/Advanced_OAR#Container_jobs)

• First create you container job using OAR cli from the frontend of your choice.
• Then instruct vagrant-g5k about this job container id in the Vagrantfile :

config.vm.provider "g5k" do |g5k|
  [...]
  g5k.job_container_id = "your container job id"
end

Developping

• clone the repository
• use $ bundle to install all the dependencies (this may take some time)
• then test your code against the provided (or modified) Vagrantfile using :

VAGRANT_LOG=debug VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER=g5k bundle exec vagrant up