Cloudlab Tutorial

Getting Started

This tutorial assumes that you have access the NSF sponsored CloudLab testbed
- To gain access, you must first create an account, and join a project from your university. See the CloudLab Docs for more information

Setting up SSH Keys for CloudLab

If you do not already have an SSH key associated with your account you will need to create one. Here are the steps to create an SSH key and upload it to CloudLab.

Open a terminal and cd to the directory you want to store the keys in

Generally, on a Windows machine, all SSH-related files are found in following location: /c/Users/PC_USER_NAME/.ssh/

On Mac/Linux, it’s typically found in the ~/.ssh directory

To generate an SSH Key:

Type ssh-keygen to make an ssh-key
Give it a name and an optional password
The public key has the extension .pub

To upload the key:

Go to cloudlab, and click on your username in the top-right corner
Go to “manage SSH keys”
Press “Load from file” and select the public key file
Once it’s loaded in, select “add key”

Starting a ONVM Profile With 1 Node on CloudLab

Click on experiments in the upper-left corner, then start an experiment
For “select a profile” you can choose the desired profile (onvm is the most updated/recommended)

If you don’t have access to the GW profiles, you can find it here
For “parameterize” use 1 host, and for node type, you can keep it as is or select a different one.

If you’re running into trouble running the manager, selecting the c220g5 node may assist you
For “finalize” you can just click next
For “schedule,” you don’t have to make a schedule, leaving it blank will start it immediately

To test your connection, you can connect Via a terminal

Open a VSCode terminal and cd inside your .ssh folder
ssh -p 22 -i <privatekeyname> <user>@<address>
Your <user>@<address> can be found by going to your experiment and clicking on “list view,” it should be under “SSH Command”

Connecting to the Node via VSCode

Before connecting, you must have uploaded your SSH key, and started an experiment You also must have these VSCode extensions:

Remote - SSH Remote - SSH: Editing Configuration Files (may come preinstalled with Remote SSH)

These aren’t neccessary but may be helpful in the future:: Remote - Containers Remote - WSL (if using Windows)

Connecting Via a Remote Window

Open the “Remote Explorer” via the sidebar (on the left by default)
In the drop-down window at the top, select SSH Targets

To the right of the SSH Targets bar, click the plus button, and enter ssh <user>@<address>
Select a configuration file (recommanded to use the one in the .ssh folder as mentioned earlier)
Modify the config file so that it has the correct settings:
It should have Port 22 IdentityFile <privatekeyname> and AddKeysToAgent Yes (on seperate lines)

You can also rename Host to whatever you want, but HostName must not be changed

If it asks you to choose an operating system, select Linux

Running the ONVM Manager and Speed Tester NF on the node

Once you are properly connected to the node, it’s time to run the manager

First, cd into /local/onvm/openNetVM/scripts and run source setup_cloudlab.sh
Depending on which node you’re using, it will ask you to bind certain network devices to dpdk

For this guide, we won’t be working with real network traffic so we do not need to bind any ports

When working with 2+ nodes, you want to make sure that the two 10 GbE devices are bound (the letters/numbers before listing the device can be used as identifiers)
Go to /local/onvm/openNetVM/onvm and run make
Go to /local/onvm/openNetVM/examples and run make
Go to /local/onvm/openNetVM and run sudo ./onvm/go.sh -k 1 -n 0xF8 -s stdout
If this gives you an error, it may be an issue with the pre-made profile, and you mmay have to pull a new onvm profile from GitHub in a new directory

Instructions on how to do so can be found here

To run the speed tester, open a new tab while the manager is running and go to /local/onvm/openNetVM/examples/speed_tester
run ./go.sh 1 -d 1 -c 16000