/
Getting Started at the Community Lab

Anuket Project

Getting Started at the Community Lab

Below is a detailed guide on how to reserve and provision a Lab as a Service resource from the UNH-IOL.

If you encounter any issues or have any questions, please email us directly at nfv-lab@iol.unh.edu.

 

Create a Community Lab Account

image-20250327-144836.png

  1. Navigate to the Lab as a Service dashboard at https://labs.lfnetworking.org/ .

  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. If you do not, please contact us.

Note: The term POD was inherited from the OPNFV “Point of Delivery” definition. In the modern context of Lab as a Service, this simply refers to a group of resources connected by a number of networks.

Design a Pod (Optional)

This step is optional for configuring a bookable pod of one or more resources connected to a public network and optionally a number of private networks. If you only need a single resource connected to a single public network, skip to Getting Started at the Community Lab | Book a Pod .

 

image-20250327-144534.png

 

  1. Go to LaaS Dashboard | Design a Pod

  2. Select the UNH-IOL lab, then navigate down using the arrows or by scrolling,

  3. Add up to 8 resources. Select the desired images and fill in host names for your own reference. Optionally add a cloud init configuration.

  4. Add a number of private networks (vlans) to be used in the pod. Note: You must have at least one public network in your pod or provisioning will fail.

  5. Configure connections from the host interfaces to the defined networks.

  6. Give your pod a name and description for your own reference.

  7. Click ‘create’ to finish creating your pod.

Book a Pod

image-20250327-145022.png

  1. Go to LaaS Dashboard | Book a Pod

  2. Select a pod

  3. Optionally provide a cloud init override to apply to all hosts in the pod.

  4. Input the LFN project (Nephio, CNTi, FD.io, 5G SBP, etc) and the booking purpose ( Demo, Testing, CI / CD, etc)

  5. Select the length of the booking. This can be extended later.

  6. (Optional) Add collaborators to the booking.

    1. Collaborators will gain SSH access to all resources

    2. Collaborators will gain access to the booking status page and IPMI tools.

    3. Collaborators will only show in the list if they have previously logged on to the LaaS dashboard and marked their profile as public in ‘<username dropdown> → settings’. They also need to add an SSH key. Try searching by LFN account email.

  7. Create the booking and wait for the resources to be provisioned. This may take between 30 and 60 minutes. If it takes significantly longer or you experience a provisioning failure, please contact support.

 

Connect to the Lab VPN

  1. Locate the ‘Your VPN Account Has Been Created’ email that was sent to you upon LaaS account creation. This contains your vpn username, temporary password, and the required vpn client configuration. If you cannot find this or need to reset your password, please contact support

  2. Download the OpenVPN client from: OpenVPN Connect - VPN For Your Operating System | OpenVPN .

  3. Connect to the VPN using the client, your credentials, and the configuration file.

    1. On Linux, this may look something like sudo openvpn --config ~/Downloads/os-vpn-client.ovpn

Note: You must be part of an active booking to connect to the VPN. If you are not, you will receive an authentication failure even if your credentials are correct. You may need to wait for the booking to be ready to be granted VPN access.

 

Access Your Resources

image-20250327-151248.png

 

SSH Access

Once connected to the VPN, you should now be able to SSH into your resources at <vpn username>@<assigned host>.opnfv.iol.unh.edu

Notes:

  • If DNS does not resolve, click 'host info` and get the IP address directly.

  • The SSH public keys uploaded for your account are added at provision time. Changing your keys after the resource has been provisioned will not update them. If you need to change keys, please do so manually from within the host or re-deploy the pod.

Bare-metal controller

You also have access to the BMC operator credentials. Click the Show IPMI Instructionsbutton for more information. From here, you may control the host power or access a web console from the BMC Web GUI.

 

Cleaning up your booking

When the booking expires, you will lose access to the booked resources, and anything stored on the hosts will no longer be accessible. If you need more time on the booking, please extend it some time before it expires. A single self service extension is available, but additional extensions are available upon request. Please submit additional extension requests multiple days in advance so that the team has time to review and extend.

 

Other Notes

  • These hosts are bare-metal servers, not virtual machines. You get access to the entire server, but this comes at the risk of hardware failures. At any time, drives or processors may fail which could result in the loss of data or connectivity to the server. This is not always recoverable in a timely manner. Please account for this possibility and back-up work whenever possible.