Today we made and Ubuntu ARM Server AMI on Amazon’s EC2. This is a 12.04 ARMhf image running on an emulated Calxeda system. Thanks to Dann Frazier for doing a bunch of the heavy lifting, you can find information on the image here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/Server:

This AMI is primarily for developers wishing to experiment with Ubuntu ARM Server. Performance is limited due to the emulation overhead. Look for AMI ID `ami-aef328c7`.

Note: this AMI requires the use of an m1.large instance type due to memory requirements.

On the installation screen I selected the “Multiple server install with MAAS” option, selected “Create a new MAAS on this server”, and followed the defaults from there. Toward the end of the install I was given an address through which I could view the MAAS control panel, 10.0.2.5. Needless to say I was pretty excited. Of course, the address didn’t work and I quickly realized that I couldn’t actually access that network. Reviewing the Networking settings for the VM I made the following changes:

Attached to: Bridged Adapter
Name: eth0
Promiscuous Mode: Allow All

I updated each unit to reflect these settings. After the update, I had to re-start the VM and reconfigure MAAS to use the new address. This was done simply with:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure maas

Then I updated the IP to reflect the new IP address within my network. After doing so 192.168.5.27 became my MAAS Master, and http://192.168.5.27/MAAS loaded the control panel!

Taking notice of what the Dashboard says, I ran the following two commands:

sudo maas createsuperuser
sudo maas-import-isos

The first command prompted me for a user, password, and email. The second ran for several minutes downloading and creating different precise images. Once that was finished, my dashboard still showed warnings of impor-isos, but more importantly I was able to log in and see that I had 0 nodes!

This gave me the confidence to push forward. I started the “maas1″ VM to begin the install process. Like before, I selected “Multiple server install with MAAS”. The next screen provided the option to Enlist with the maas-master MAAS Server, so I happily selected that option when the machine suddenly SIGKILLs all processes then powers off. The victory was in the dashboard though, as it now reflected 1 node!

I continued doing this for each of the “maas” VMs until all were registered in the maas-master dashboard. Unfortunately, during installation, of one of the nodes lost my naming scheme (I was trying to do maas-node0, maas-node1, … for each MAAS node) and ended up naming one of the maas2, which threw off the naming for the rest of the nodes. That aside, all of the initial nodes I wanted to enlist did so without any issues.

Now it was time to get some Juju goodness pushing against these machines. The first thing I did was hunt down my MAAS Key. I stumbled through a few sections of the dashboard before landing in the account preferences. I also noticed a section for SSH Keys which I added my public key to (for good measure). I copied my MAAS Key and created the following stanza in my juju environments file (I couldn’t find documentation on the Juju site for MAAS setup but I found this URL from a screenshot of MAAS testing tools, which lead me to the answer).

environments:
  vb-maas:
    type: maas
    maas-server: http://192.168.5.27:80/MAAS
    maas-oauth: "MY:MAAS:KEY"
    admin-secret: super-secret-made-up-admin-key
    default-series: precise

After doing that, boot each VM and the PXE DHCP should find your MAAS Master and set up the VM properly. Each machine will turn off after successful setup and MAAS Dashboard will update. The end result is quite glorious:

Now it’s really time to get Juju working with these lovely MAAS machines! After several non-starts I created a new account in MAAS Dashboard with the same username as my local user and updated Juju environments to use that MAAS Key. After completing that, I issued a bootstrap:

juju bootstrap

and checked the dashboard after the command completed.

The dashboard now shows one of the nodes allocated to Juju for bootstrapping. I had to manually start each VM, as for some reason they don’t respond to Wake On Lan. However, my goal of using Juju to deploy to MAAS was fulfilled. There is definitely room for improvement with the experience, but I have high hopes when we start throwing bare metal at MAAS.

So how can you win yourself one of these? Well, with 66 services already ready to be deployed on the cloud we’re always looking for more, so have a look at what you think is missing from the Juju Charm Store and submit your charm as an entry.

We’ve got the step-by-step instructions on how to write your own charm, we’re looking for things DevOps deploy to the cloud, so be creative! You have from now until May 09 to submit your charm. At that point we’ll judge the entries, and then give out the Dell XPS 13′s during the last day of the Ubuntu  Developer Summit, so if you’re missing your favorite service from the Charm Store, submit an entry and you’ll automatically be entered in the contest.

Full contest rules here, including the judging criteria, so you’ll want to read that before you get started. Happy Charming!

Pull Requests or filing Issue’s are more than Welcome’d from anyone.

Need help getting started with juju? Check out our Getting Started documentation and then browse through the Charm Store to see what you can start deploying today!

The event takes place on Tuesday 8th May, at the The Oakland Marriott City Center Hotel, and runs in conjunction with UDS.

The agenda is still being defined, but the sessions will cover some interesting ideas, challenges and trends around cloud computing and how attendees can deploy an open cloud in their organisation.

Topics will include:

• The Open Cloud - The role of open source in cloud computing—particularly how an open cloud enables a more flexible, vendor-neutral approach.
• Lessons from cloud deployments - Open cloud deployments are real and growing. We’ll discuss and illustrate through case studies the best approaches to deploying and maximising an open cloud.
• Open-source cloud technologies - With Ubuntu including technologies such as OpenStack, MAAS and Juju, we’ll examine how they come together to form an open cloud.

For more information, visit: http://uds.ubuntu.com/cloud-summit/

The cost of a ticket for attending this event is $100 which includes lunch and refreshments.

The Grand Prize ($300 Amazon Gift Card) goes to Jimmi Andersen for his charm that deploys Appflower, a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool for building web applications. You can check out the charm in the store for deployment instructions. The judges were impressed by how complete the charm is and how it brings software to Ubuntu that was previously only available by installing it by hand.

The 2 runners up (in no particular order) are Kees Cook for sbuild, and Ben Kerensa for Subway. sbuild provides a build environment for developers to test packages against and has been used for portable “hackathons” where having the packages build on the cloud is quicker and more convenient than building on your local machines. The Subway charm deploys the Subway IRC client, a sexy web based IRC client that uses Node.js and MongoDB. Thanks Ben and Kees, you’ll each receive a $100 Amazon gift card.

The charm store continues to grow as we now have over 73 total charms. The following people contributed charms to the contest and will each receive a Juju tshirt and Ubuntu travel mug: Patrick Hetu (znc and OpenERP), Atul Jha (OwnCloud), Nathan Osman (StackMobile), shazzner (Gitolite), and Brandon Holtsclaw (Drupal). Honorable mention goes to Ryan Kather, who attempted Moodle but was not able to complete it in time. Maybe next time! We’ll go deeper into these charms and show off their examples throughout the coming weeks.

Not finding what you need in the Charm Store? Well you can always contribute your own charms, here’s how you can get started.

UK cloud provider Brightbox would like to announce that they now have daily images of Ubuntu 12.04 available for testing. Brightbox has an EC2 compatible metadata service that works with Ubuntu’s cloud-init, you can find more about that in the documentation.

As a thank you to the Ubuntu community Brightbox is running a special through to September. A 10% discount to casual testers, and a 50% discount to anyone registering using their @ubuntu.com address.

Testers can sign up at http://brightbox.com/, and to claim the discount you just need to email support@brightbox.com with your account id and let them know how you’re testing out Ubuntu.

Here’s their Getting Started guide. Happy testing!

We’ll still have all next week for you to fix up your entries to pass reviews. Happy charming!

So far we’ve had some great in-progress entries, including: Subway IRC, Firefox Sync Server, Freeciv Server, ZNC, gitolite, OpenERP server, and the BOINC client.

Who will win the $300 Amazon card? And who will win the 2 $100 runner up prizes? It’s heating up folks!