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Service Documentation

Project Management Guide

Required Member Permissions

VMs and user accounts can only be managed by project members with Cloud Admin permissions. This includes the principal investigator (PI) of the project and all project managers (PM). Through SAFE the PI can designate project managers and the PI and PMs can grant a project member the Cloud Admin role:

  1. Click "Manage Project in SAFE" at the bottom of the project page (opens a new tab)
  2. On the project management page in SAFE, scroll down to "Manage Members"
  3. Click Add project manager or Set member permissions

For details please refer to the SAFE documentation: How can I designate a user as a project manager?

Create a VM

To create a new VM:

  1. Select the project from the list of your projects, e.g. eidfxxx
  2. Click on the 'New Machine' button

  3. Complete the 'Create Machine' form as follows:

    1. Provide an appropriate name, e.g. dev-01. The project code will be prepended automatically to your VM name, in this case your VM would be named eidfxxx-dev-01.
    2. Select a suitable operating system
    3. Select a machine specification that is suitable
    4. Choose the required disk size (in GB) or leave blank for the default
    5. Tick the checkbox "Configure RDP access" if you would like to install RDP and configure VDI connections via RDP for your VM.
    6. Select the package installations from the software catalogue drop-down list, or "None" if you don't require any pre-installed packages

  4. Click on 'Create'

  5. You should see the new VM listed under the 'Machines' table on the project page and the status as 'Creating'
  6. Wait while the job to launch the VM completes. This may take up to 10 minutes, depending on the configuration you requested. You have to reload the page to see updates.
  7. Once the job has completed successfully the status shows as 'Active' in the list of machines.

You may wish to ensure that the machine size selected (number of CPUs and RAM) does not exceed your remaining quota before you press Create, otherwise the request will fail.

In the list of 'Machines' in the project page in the portal, click on the name of new VM to see the configuration and properties, including the machine specification, its 10.24.*.* IP address and any configured VDI connections.

Quota and Usage

Each project has a quota for the number of instances, total number of vCPUs, total RAM and storage. You will not be able to create a VM if it exceeds the quota.

You can view and refresh the project usage compared to the quota in a table near the bottom of the project page. This table will be updated automatically when VMs are created or removed, and you can refresh it manually by pressing the "Refresh" button at the top of the table.

Please contact the helpdesk if your quota requirements have changed.

Add a user account

User accounts allow project members to log in to the VMs in a project. The Project PI and project managers manage user accounts for each member of the project. Users usually use one account (username and password) to log in to all the VMs in the same project that they can access, however a user may have multiple accounts in a project, for example for different roles.

  1. From the project page in the portal click on the 'Create account' button under the 'Project Accounts' table at the bottom

  2. Complete the 'Create User Account' form as follows:

    1. Choose 'Account user name': this could be something sensible like the first and last names concatenated (or initials) together with the project name. The username is unique across all EPCC systems so the user will not be able to reuse this name in another project once it has been assigned.
    2. Select the project member from the 'Account owner' drop-down field
    3. Click 'Create'

The user can now set the password for their new account on the account details page.

Adding Access to the VM for a User

User accounts can be granted or denied access to existing VMs.

  1. Click 'Manage' next to an existing user account in the 'Project Accounts' table on the project page, or click on the account name and then 'Manage' on the account details page
  2. Select the checkboxes in the column "Access" for the VMs to which this account should have access or uncheck the ones without access
  3. Click the 'Update' button
  4. After a few minutes, the job to give them access to the selected VMs will complete and the account status will show as "Active".

If a user is logged in already to the VDI at https://eidf-vdi.epcc.ed.ac.uk/vdi newly added connections may not appear in their connections list immediately. They must log out and log in again to refresh the connection information, or wait until the login token expires and is refreshed automatically - this might take a while.

If a user only has one connection available in the VDI they will be automatically directed to the VM with the default connection.

Sudo permissions

A project manager or PI may also grant sudo permissions to users on selected VMs. Management of sudo permissions must be requested in the project application - if it was not requested or the request was denied the functionality described below is not available.

  1. Click 'Manage' next to an existing user account in the 'Project Accounts' table on the project page
  2. Select the checkboxes in the column "Sudo" for the VMs on which this account is granted sudo permissions or uncheck to remove permissions
  3. Make sure "Access" is also selected for the sudo VMs to allow login
  4. Click the 'Update' button

After a few minutes, the job to give the user account sudo permissions on the selected VMs will complete. On the account detail page a "sudo" badge will appear next to the selected VMs.

Please contact the helpdesk if sudo permission management is required but is not available in your project.

First login

A new user account must reset the password before they can log in for the first time.

The user can reset the password in their account details page.

Updating an existing machine

Adding RDP Access

If you did not select RDP access when you created the VM you can add it later:

  1. Open the VM details page by selecting the name on the project page
  2. Click on 'Configure RDP'
  3. The configuration job runs for a few minutes.

Once the RDP job is completed, all users that are allowed to access the VM will also be permitted to use the RDP connection.

Software catalogue

You can install packages from the software catalogue at a later time, even if you didn't select a package when first creating the machine.

  1. Open the VM details page by selecting the name on the project page
  2. Click on 'Software Catalogue'
  3. Select the configuration you wish to install and press 'Submit'
  4. The configuration job runs for a few minutes.