I'm trying to learn ML on GCP. Some of the Qwiklabs and Tutorials start with Cloud Shell to setup things like env variables and install Python packages, while others start by opening an SSH terminal into a VM to do those preliminary steps.
I can't really tell the difference between the two approaches, other than the fact that in the second case a VM needs to be provisioned first. Presumably, when you use Cloud Shell some sort of VM instance is being provisioned for you behind the scenes anyway.
So how are the two approaches different?
Cloud Shell is a product that is designed to give a large number of preconfigured tools that are kept updated, as well as being quick to start, accessable from the UI, and free. Basically, its a quick way to get an interactive shell. You can learn more about this environment from its documentation.
There are also limits to Cloud Shell -- you can only use it for 60 hours a week, if you go idle your session is terminated, and there is only 5GB of storage. It is also only an f1-micro instance, IIRC. So while it is provisioned for you (and free!), it isn't really useful for anything other than an interactive shell.
On the other hand, SSHing into a VM places you directly in a terminal on that VM, much like you would on any specific host -- you only have whatever tools that the image installed onto that VM provides (and many VMs come pretty bare bones, it depends on the image). But, you're now in a terminal on the host that is likely executing the code you want to work with, and it has as much CPU and RAM as you provisioned in that instance.
As far as guides pointing you to one or the other -- thats really up to them, but I suspect they'd point client / tool type work to the cloud shell (since its easy and a reasonably standard environment, which can even be scripted with tutorials), while they'd probably point how to install necessary software for use in production to a "real" VM.
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Currently we are running some of our small ruby scripts through CI machines like teamcity. But the problem is that teamcity is only free to a certain point and we are reaching that cap. The thing I like about teamcity is the fact that I can define how to run the scripts in it and then have the logs shown in each of the "build" processes so if something goes wrong or I want to verify something I don't have log onto the server and inspect individual files.
The problem is that I need to be able to run the same process at about 4x the capacity I am now, which means I need about 4 times the build agents which leaving the free licensing. Now obviously I could just spin up more teamcity servers but that then becomes a pain.
So my question is, what is another way that I could just basically setup cron processes on linux machines (i have a lot "freely") but then give myself the exposure and ease of access of logs similarly that I gain from teamcity. Obviously I know that setting up cron processes aren't hard but I really want to avoid having to log onto the machine to check and see if my automated processes are running correctly or struggling.
Thanks in advance!
p.s. I also have access to windows machines if there is an easier way to do it there.
Install an open-source CI server like Jenkins if you want to host it yourself. You can also run it on your own machine, though it's usually better to have it always on in the cloud.
I tried to adopt Vagrant in our team. I created a Vagrantfile and make provisioning in some way. Everything works as charm, but ...
It's unclear for me how I can automate some routine tasks like:
running django(I use django, but it's framework agnostic problem) dev server on 0.0.0.0
running grunt watcher
providing a separate console for django-specific commands
It is looks like vagrant not intended to help with this kind of automation and I look for some community adopted way to do that. I goggled and found nothing.
I see a few way to that:
bootstrap.sh script but messy and hard to mantain
something like tmuxinator -- requires tmux on host machine and now it's impossible to put tmuxconfig in project repo
etc
What is the 'canonical' way to resolve this problem?
P.S.: Please, think about designers, manual testers and other guys which like to use tools as is
In general you are best off using a provisioner. To be honest, a bootstrap.sh file is a good place to start unless you want to learn the ins and outs of something like chef / ansible / salt / puppet. If you do you might want to start at salt (SaltStack) because it is written in python which I'm guessing you use given the django angle.
For your specific questions:
Part of the point of vagrant is it lets you develop against real stacks and real web servers so you can avoid the "oh, that don't quite work the same on apache" moment that often comes in projects. So for your first question I would look at how to provision the app behind apache / nginx or whatever you are using for the production web servers.
Because of the shared file systems users can just run grunt locally on the host machine. This also lets grunt do things like hook into OSX notifications.
I'm not familiar with tmuxinator so I'm not sure how to start here. But if it is a service that the server really runs then you should figure out a way to package the install and deploy it to the provisioned VM. As for configuration, is it possible to get a dev config in the repo?
Same as #Wyatt, I recommend use Vagrant with provision tools, such as puppet, saltstack, chef, anisble, etc. These tools are created for the requirements you ask for, and most are open source. Choice is no wrong, you can start learning from any one, they are similar.
With that, you can quickly and easily run several VM servers with all applications installed automatically. With the customised Puppet codes or chef cookbooks, you can update them any time and provision to VM easily, you can re-use them for your PROD environment as well.
Take some times to learn one of these automation tools first, you will get benefit to save a lot of time.
I use Puppet, and recommend the best puppet book PRO PUPPET to you. It has all you need.
I have a minecraft server running ubuntu server. What i've been doing so far is using putty to create a new session on my PC. The problem is that eventually like most human beings I go to sleep, and do not like having my PC left on cuz of the noise. If i turn off my PC obviously that session will end and the server will go down. What I want to do is create a session on the main server(not my PC), and use putty to control that existing session(from my PC). This way even if I turn off my PC the server will still be running in the other room. I appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance.
What you are describing is referred to as a daemon in UNIX. The standard way to manage daemons is through the init system. The init system has been around for a very long time and has diverged quite a bit between BSD, Solaris, and the various Linux Distros.
All the init systems provide the same basic functionality. The init system manages long running processes which are not tied to a user login. They are frequently used for managing server oriented processes, such as web servers.
Where the init systems differ is in their usage and the features they provide. Ubuntu uses an init replacement called upstart and it is very well documented.
You could write the needed upstart scripts yourself, but a quick search provides plenty of upstart scripts other people have created for minecraft that you could use instead.
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Ubuntu_startup_script
You are looking for tmux or screen.
Is there a way to run an Amazon EC2 AMI image in Windows? I'd like to be able to do some testing and configuration locally. I'm looking for something like Virtual PC.
If you build your images from scratch you can do it with VMware (or insert your favorite VM software here).
Build and install your linux box as you'd like it, then run the AMI packaging/uploading tools in the guest. Then, just keep backup copies of your VM image in sync with the different AMI's you upload.
Some caveats: you'll need to make sure you're using compatible kernels, or at least have compatible kernel modules in the VM, or your instance won't boot on the EC2 network. You'll also have to make sure your system can autoconfigure itself, too (network, mounts, etc).
If you want to use an existing AMI, it's a little trickier. You need to download and unpack the AMI into a VM image, add a kernel and boot it. As far as I know, there's no 'one click' method to make it work. Also, the AMI's might be encrypted (I know they are at least signed).
You may be able to do this by having a 'bootstrap' VM set up to specifically extract the AMI's into a virtual disk using the AMI tools, then boot that virtual disk separately.
I know it's pretty vague, but those are the steps you'd have to go through. You could probably do some scripting to automate the process of converting AMI's to vdks.
The Amazon forum is also helpful. For example, see this article.
Oh, this article also talks about some of these processes in detail.
Amazon EC2 with Windows Server - announced this morning, very exciting
http://aws.amazon.com/windows/
It's a bit of a square peg in a round hole ... kind of like running MS-Office on Linux.
Depending on how you value your time, it's cheaper to just get another PC and install Linux and Xen.
I'm working on some academic research projects involving scraping large data sets from the web using Python. It's been inconvenient to work on my academic institution's Linux server because (1) I don't have superuser access, meaning I'm dependent on the IT staff to install my packages, and (2) my disk quota is somewhat limited (I would ideally want ~10 GB). What is the simplest way for me to get access to a machine that solves these problems? I don't need huge processing power; I just need access to a reasonably fast machine that runs 24/7, so that my programs can run continuously, and above all, something very simple to get running, use, and maintain, since I have a few non-CS people working on this project with me. Linux would be preferable, but I'd consider Windows too.
I'm aware of Amazon Web Services, but am wondering if there's something more appropriate to my specific needs.
By the way, it would be a huge bonus if I could get some sort of remote desktop access to this machine so I wasn't limited to using SSH and SFTP.
Suggestions?
EDIT: I can't use VirtualBox or Virtual PC because I need the program to be running around the clock, and I need to turn off my laptop often, etc.
If you do want to stick with running on your CS department's machines, use virtualenv to solve your package installation woes. And if disk space is an issue, you could use S3 (and perhaps FUSE) to store huge amounts of data extremely cheaply.
However, if that's not really what you're after, I can recommend Slicehost very highly. They give you a virtual private server - so you have complete control over what gets installed, users, admin, etc.
In principle, it's very much like EC2 (which I prefer to use for "real" servers), but has a friendly interface, great customer service and is aimed at smaller projects like yours.
Use x11vnc with ssh.
'sudo apt-get install x11vnc' on your remote server.
Once you have that, you can access your remote server via vnc, but the great thing is that you can tunnel vnc over ssh like so:
ssh -X -C -L 5900:localhost:5900 remotehost x11vnc -localhost -display :0
For more details see the x11vnc manpage.
Or, just setup remote desktop -- (which is actually vnc) on your linux distribution. Most distributions come with a GUI to configure remote desktop access.
If you have a linux machine you can use, then SSH -X will allow you to start GUI programs. It's not remote desktop, but it's close.
ssh -X whoever#whatever.com
firefox
Then bam. A firefox window pops on your desktop.
I have been pretty happy with TekTonic Virtual Private Servers. It's a virtualized environment, but you have full root access to install any packages you need. I'm not sure what your CPU and memory constraints are, but if they aren't too extensive then this should fit the bill nicely for you. I don't know if you would be able to enable a remote desktop as I've never tried but it may be possible to install the requisite packages.
The plans range from $15/mo to $100/mo, the $15/mo plan comes with 294MB RAM, 13GB disk space, and 2.6GHz max CPU speed. I ran on that plan for quite a while and eventually moved up to the next level up with double the disk/cpu/mem, and I've been quite happy with it. I've been with them since 2003 and have yet to find anyone who offers equivalent plans at these prices.