2. Quickstart

One of the features up Cloudmesh is to easily start new virtual machines on vairous clouds. It uses defaults for these clouds that can be chaned, but are easily stored in a yaml file located at ~/.cloudmesh/cloudmesh4.yaml This file is created upon first start of the shell. You need to edit it and include some of your cloud information.

A template for the yaml file is located at:

2.1. Command line

It is easy to switch beteeen clouds with the set command. Ater the set and specifying the cloud by name many commands will default to that cloud. The exception is the vm list command that lists by default all vms on all clouds. In addition the vm refresh command will also work on all clouds.

$ cms admin mongo create  # needs only be done one time
$ cms admin mongo start

$ cms set cloud=vagrant
$ cms vm start
$ cms image list
$ cms flavor list

$ cms set cloud=aws
$ cms vm start
$ cms image list
$ cms flavor list

$ cms set cloud=azure
$ cms vm start
$ cms image list
$ cms flavor list

$ cms set cloud=chameleon
$ cms vm start
$ cms image list
$ cms flavor list

$ cms set cloud=jetstream
$ cms vm start
$ cms image list
$ cms flavor list

$ cms vm refresh

$ cms vm listcms admin mongo stop

In case you want a command explicitly apply to one or more clouds or one or more vms, they can be specified by name such as

$ cms vm list --name vm[0-100]
$ cms vm list --cloud aws,azure

Defaults for the cloud and the name can be specified through set such as

$ cms set name=vm[0-100]
$ cms set cloud=aws,azure

Using the commands

$ cms vm list

would than add the appropriate options to the command. To reset the show to all vms set name and cloud to all

$ cms set name=all
$ cms set cloud=all

2.2. Interactive shell (proposed)

Cloudmesh uses cmd5 for its shell implementation and thus all commands that are typed in in the terminal can also be typed in into a shell that is started with cms

$ cms
cms> set cloud=aws
cms> vm start

2.3. Command scripts

As we use cmd5 we also have access to piped and named scripts with

$ echo script.cms | cms

and

$ cms --script script.cms

2.4. Cache

All information about for example virtual machines are cached locally. The cache for various information sources can be explicitly updated with the --refresh flag. Thus the command

$ cms vm list --refresh

would first execute a refresh while the command

$ cms vm list

would only read from the local cache

To chang ethe behavior and alwas do a refresh you can use the command

$ cms set refresh=True

To switch it off you can say

$ cms set refresh=False

2.5. Manual

The manaul page can be opened with

$ cms open doc

or in case you start it in the source with

$ cms open doc local