README

cloudcluster

    cloudcluster is Python program for launching and managing clusters of
    instances in the cloud. Amazon EC2 is currently the only supported cloud.
    Thus, it is assumed that you are already setup on Amazon EC2 and can launch
    and terminate instances on demand.

    cloudcluster allows you to launch a "class" of clusters. A class 
    is a group of 1 or more clusters. Each cluster contains 1 or more
    instances. cloudcluster will launch the clusters on the cloud, generate
    random root passwords for the instances (and set them), and configure 
    /etc/hosts on each of the clusters so that headnode, node1, node2, etc. 
    reference the IP addresses of all of the instances in a particular 
    cluster. Additionally, you can then query the status of all of the
    instances and terminate them with cloudcluster.

Install dependencies

    1. python 2.5+ 
       http://python.org/
    2. libcloud
       http://incubator.apache.org/libcloud/
    3. git
       http://git-scm.com/

Getting cloudcluster

    1. git clone git://github.com/pdmars/cloudcluster.git

Using cloudcluster

    cd cloudcluster

    Setup configuration file:
        cp share/cloudcluster.conf.example ./cloudcluster.conf

    Configure the settings in cloudcluster.conf
        Specifically:
            - Place your Amazon Access ID in a file pointed to by
              ACCESS_ID_FILE
            - Place your Amazon Secret Key in a file pointed to by
              SECRET_KEY_FILE

    Specific notes
        - Don't use spaces in the cloudcluster.conf configuration values
        - Don't use spaces in the class name that you specify. The cluster
          and node names will be generated automatically when you start a
          class or add an additional cluster to a class.
        - Use the genpasswords.py script to generate a password file to
          use with cccontrol.py for multiple clusters.

    Getting started
        python cccontrol.py -h

Assumptions made by cloudcluster

    - The cloud is Amazon EC2 (or equivalent)
    - The cloud image is Linux
    - The cloud image must have the host command in order to configure 
      /etc/hosts; in Debian this is in the package dnsutils
    - The cloud image must accept passwordless root SSH logins (for example,
      using SSH keys - specifically, the keypair specified in 
      cloudluster.conf)
    - The local system must have the ssh command in the path