DemoGrid EC2 quickstart


DemoGrid is now known as Globus Provision. Please visit the Globus Provision website for updated documentation.
The DemoGrid documentation will remain available only for archival purposes.


Running DemoGrid on Amazon EC2 is the simplest way of running DemoGrid. This quickstart highlights the main steps involved in getting DemoGrid running on EC2. For more detailed instructions, please see the full documentation.

1. Install DemoGrid

You can read detailed installation instructions here.

2. Get an Amazon EC2 account

If you don't already have one, get one now.

3. Write a DemoGrid configuration file

For example, you could use the following file:

[general]
organizations: a b
myproxy: yes

[organization-a]
grid-users: 2
grid-users-auth: certs
nongrid-users: 2
gridftp: yes
lrm: condor
cluster-nodes: 2

[organization-b]
grid-users: 2
grid-users-auth: myproxy
nongrid-users: 2
gridftp: yes
lrm: torque
cluster-nodes: 2

[ec2]
ami = ami-6251a70b
snap = snap-132adf7e
keypair = XXX
keyfile = /home/demogriduser/.ec2/XXX.pem
instance_type = t1.micro
availability_zone = us-east-1a

This specifies a small grid with two organizations, each with a GridFTP server, a GRAM server (one organization with a small Torque cluster, another with Condor), several users pre-created, all the necessary host and user certificates for all of it to work, and a MyProxy server.

Make sure you specify a valid Amazon EC2 SSH Keypair in options keypair and keyfile, and save the file as ~/.demogrid/demogrid.conf. You can find more details on the [ec2] configuration section in the Running on EC2 page.

4. Deploy on EC2

Export your Amazon EC2 access key ID and secret key as environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, respectively. Then, all you have to do is run two commands:

$ demogrid-prepare
Generating files...  done!
Generating certificates...  done!
Copying chef files...  done!
Copying other files...  done!

$ demogrid-ec2-launch
Launching 13 EC2 instances... done!
Configuring DemoGrid nodes... (this may take a few minutes)
   b-server: Basic setup is done. Installing Grid software now.
   auth: Basic setup is done. Installing Grid software now.
   a-server: Basic setup is done. Installing Grid software now.
   b-server is ready.
   [...]
   b-login is ready.
   b-clusternode-2 is ready.
   a-clusternode-1 is ready.
You just went from zero to grid in 3 minutes and 40 seconds!
Your login nodes are:
b-login: ec2-XX-XX-XX-XX.compute-1.amazonaws.com
a-login: ec2-XX-XX-XX-XX.compute-1.amazonaws.com

For more details on these commands, see the Running on EC2 page.

Oh, and notice how, since we're using EC2 micro-instances, this particular example only costs $0.26/hour.

5. Tinker around with your DemoGrid

Now you can log into either login node, and try some of the Sample Exercises:

ssh ubuntu@ec2-XX-XX-XX-XX.compute-1.amazonaws.com
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