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Getting Started with EVE-OS at the LF Edge Community Lab

Getting Started with EVE-OS at the LF Edge Community Lab

Owned by Justin Choquette
Jan 21, 2025
6 min read

Below is a detailed guide on how to reserve and provision a community resource with EVE-OS.
If you encounter any issues or have any questions, please email us directly at nfv-lab@iol.unh.edu

Create a Community Lab Account

01-landing.png

  1. Navigate to the community lab dashboard at http://laas.lfedge.iol.unh.edu .

  2. Select Login with LFID and authenticate with your Linux Foundation credentials

  3. When prompted, fill out additional details such as name and company to complete your account registration. Your Linux Foundation account email will be linked to your dashboard account. This cannot be changed.

  4. You should receive an email from us confirming that your account has been created. This email contains important VPN access information.

 

Reserve a Resource

  1. Select Book a Pod from the landing screen.

  2. When prompted, upload an SSH public key. This will not be used for hosts deployed with EVE-OS, but it is required for other images such as Ubuntu.

    • Select Upload to choose the .pub key directly from your file explorer, or alternatively you may paste the contents of the key directly into the input box.

    • Select Save when you are done.

    • If re-prompted to add an SSH key, the upload was not successful. This may happen if the file / content provided is not a valid SSH public key.

    • For help on generating an SSH key pair, please refer to Generate an SSH Key Pair

  3. Select the resource / image combination that you would like to reserve, such as Dell Server 1 (EVE-OS 12.0.4-lts)

  4. Navigate down the workflow using the navigation arrows or the mouse wheel. Skip the Global Cloud Init Override section and proceed to the Booking Details section.

  5. Fill out the Project and Purpose fields. Please be as specific as possible, as we can use this information in the future to better assist the community.

  6. Use the slider to set the length of your booking. This slider only has a maximum of 21 days, but if you need more time you can extend your booking.

  7. Optionally add other public site users as collaborators. Collaborators will be given VPN and IPMI access, as well as permission to view the booking detail page.

    • You may mark your account as public from the account settings page.

  8. Review the details of the booking, and select Book in the next section to begin provisioning your resources. This will take some time, so proceed to the next steps while your resources are prepared. You will receive an email when the booking is ready.

Create an LF Edge Sandbox Account

 

03-sandbox-landing.png

 


The LF Edge sandbox will be required to manage and install edge applications on your EVE-OS enabled device. Please refer to the documentation at LF Edge Sandbox for help getting started and setting up your account.

If you able to see something resembling the page above, you are ready to proceed.

Onboarding Your EVE-OS Host

 

 

Once your booking has finished provisioning, you will need to onboard your host to the LF Edge sandbox.

  1. Navigate to the Edge Nodes page and select Add Edge Node

  2. Enter an arbitrary name for your node, such as laas-dell1 and select a project from the drop down.

  3. Choose Onboarding Key as the Identity Type. The onboarding key can be found on the LF Edge wiki at Onboarding Key

  4. Enter the brand, model, and serial number for your resource. This information can be found using the Host info button on the booking status page once your booking is ready.

  5. Select defaultIPv4-net as the network for each port mapping. Defaults for the rest of the fields should be sufficient.

  6. Click Add at the bottom of the screen

  7. After a few moments, the node status should change from provisioned to online.

Installing Your First Edge App

 

 


This section will walk you through adding the Nginx Global Edge App to your newly onboarded EVE-OS system.

  1. Navigate to the Marketplace page and select the Global Edge Apps tab.

  2. Search for the Nginx Edge App and click the import icon. If redirected to the app page, click the import icon again. You will see a green Imported banner if the app has been successfully imported.

  3. Navigate to the Edge App Instances page and select Add Edge App Instance.

  4. Choose Nginx from the Edge App dropdown and select your project from the project dropdown.

  5. Select your edge node from the list of edge nodes and click Next.

  6. Enter a name for the edge app instance such as nginx-test.

  7. Navigate through the workflow until you reach the deploy step, then click Deploy.

  8. After some time, you should see your app instance configured on the Edge App Instances page.

  9. If connected to the VPN (see details below), you should be able to see the Nginx default landing page from your browser by navigating to the public IP or FQDN of your provisioned host, obtainable from the Host Info button on the booking detail page.

Controlling Your Host


Connect to the lab VPN

  • To access any booked resources, please connect to the VPN using the OpenVPN client.

  • To setup the VPN client, you can download the OpenVPN client from: https://openvpn.net/vpn-client/.

  • You should have received an email upon the creation of you community lab dashboard account containing the following:

    • Your VPN Username

    • Your VPN Temporary Password

    • The os-vpn-client.ovpn configuration file.

  • Follow the steps for your operating system to connect to the lab VPN using the openvpn client

    • On Linux, the can be done through the command line with sudo openvpn --config os-vpn-client.ovpn.

  • If you did not receive this email, need to reset your password, or require other assistance, please contact us at nfv-lab@iol.unh.edu.

  • To update your password, please connect to the following site, after connecting to the VPN: https://os-passwd.iol.unh.edu.

  • Please note:

    • You must have an active booking to connect to the VPN. If you receive an authentication failure after providing valid credentials, this is because you have no active bookings.

    • Our OpenVPN does not require a client / user certificate, but the OpenVPN client may prompt for this during setup, you can ignore the prompt.

Accessing the bare-metal controller


Your community resource is a bare-metal server with IPMI support.

Managing host power


This may done in a variety of ways

  1. From the booking detail page using the IPMI Tool controls (No VPN Required)

  2. Using IPMI Tool

    • An active VPN connection is required

    • The IPMI address and your operator username / password are viewable from the Show IPMI Instructions button on your booking detail page.

  3. From the Web BMC

    • An active VPN connection is required

    • Navigate to the IPMI FQDN provided by the Show IPMI Instructions from your browser and authenticate using the IPMI credentials provided to you.

    • GUIs vary by brand / model. For the Dell R740 hosts, the power tools can be found under the Maintenance tab.

Remote Terminal

  1. From the Web BMC

    • See details above for accessing the Web BMC

    • Select Launch Virtual Console

Cleaning Up Your Booking

  • You will lose IPMI and VPN access to your resources when your booking expires. If you need extensions, please request one at the booking status page.

  • Your edge node will not be automatically removed from the LF Edge sandbox, but it will become unusable and the status will change to unknown.

  • You can safely delete the node after the booking has expired. Please note, you must delete associated app instances before sandbox will allow you to delete the edge node