Jetstream is a level 1 service provider of XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment). It is a user-friendly cloud computing environment for researchers based on Atmosphere and OpenStack. UTSA researchers can request resource allocations for free to use the computing resources. Researchers need to create an account with XSEDE in order to access Jetstream.

Deploy a customized virtual machine on Jetstream

Jetstream has quite a few pre-existing virtual machines (VM) available through Atmosphere, a user-friendly web interface. Users can create their VMs based on those pre-existing VMs. However, users cannot deploy their pre-built VMs on Jetstream via Atmosphere. The only way to deploy pre-built VMs on Jetstream is to request access to the OpenStack API, and create and manage VMs via the Openstack web interface or command-line interface. A PI with resource allocation can request access to the API via XSEDE ticket system. Once you are granted the access to the API, you need read the instructions carefully. Here is an example for deploying SEED LABS VM on Jetscream.

1. Install the OpenStack Command-line tools following the instructions Jetstream wiki.
2. Install QEMU disk image utility
3. Download SEED LABS VM from https://seedsecuritylabs.org/
4. unzip the file
5. Open a terminal and change the directory to where the file is unzipped.
6. Use the qemu-img command to combine the vmdk files and convert the combined file to the raw format.
7. Use the following OpenStack command to upload the VM image:

-- Zhiwei - 16 Oct 2020