Management operations on a FIWARE Lab node

In this section, we include the different management operations that are needed in order to work with the FIWARE Lab node. These operations include the management of new FIWARE Lab accounts, the procedure to create base images taking into account the security recommendations and the management of the Help Desk tickets associated to the different FIWARE Lab nodes.

Account Management

This section contains the different actions to manage a user account. The most important issue relating to customer accounts is the process to upgrade from a FIWARE Trial Account to a FIWARE Community Account, what are their available resources, how can they apply and what every FIWARE Lab node administrator have to do to proceed with it.

Request for Community Account Upgrade

To request an account upgrade, FIWARE Lab users need to request it through the filling in of an Upgrade Account form available in the FIWARE Lab cloud portal.

Who can apply?

Individuals and Companies willing to develop innovative applications based on FIWARE, and to disclose the usage of FIWARE they will make.

How much does it cost?

It's free! We are enacting this requirement to ensure that start-ups and SMEs willing to develop applications and demonstrators using FIWARE have the access to the proper resources.

How long do I retain the Community Status?

The typical duration for the community status is 9 months. We believe this is enough to allow teams the development of a complete solution based on FIWARE. If it is needed, accounts can be extended. Send a request to fiware-lab-help@lists.fiware.org in order to request an extension of your account with the justification of this extension.

How can I request a Community Account upgrade?

Users can apply through the FIWARE Lab cloud page clicking on the “Request Community Account” button.

How long should it take to complete the procedure?

The support team is available 9 am to 5 pm during working days. Except for complex request where negotiation of resources is required, a request should be fulfilled in 1 working day.

Quotas and Flavours

What is a Flavour and what are the available flavours?

Flavours represents the size of virtual machines. FIWARE Lab flavours are based on OpenStack flavours. Available flavours in the FIWARE Lab are listed in this table.

ID Flavour Memory Disk Virtual CPUs
1 m1.tiny 512 1 1
2 m1.small 2048 20 1
3 m1.medium 4096 40 2
4 m1.large 8192 80 4

Keep in mind that it is only a recommendation to optimize the physical resources available in a node. Each of the FIWARE Lab administrators is free to create new flavours or change resources assigned to users but in that case, they could break the homogeneity between different FIWARE Lab nodes and could be difficult (if not impossible in some cases) to make a migration from one node to another.

What are the default quotas?

By default, each user has assigned a minimum number of resources that can be used in the development of its solution. This quota is comprised of the following values:

VM Instances vCPUs Hard Disk Memory Public IPs Routers Networks
2 2 40 Gb 4096 Mb 1 0 0

What are the default maximum quotas?

If the project required more resources, the users have the possibility to explain it and the default quotas can be extended to a maximum default quotas that is comprised of the following values:

VM Instances vCPUs Hard Disk Memory Public IPs Routers Networks
5 10 100 Gb 10240 Mb 1 1 1

Keep in mind that in order that users can obtain more resources, it is mandatory that they provide the corresponding justification why they need more resources. Exceptionally, if users need more resources, after a clear justification the FIWARE Lab nodes can provide extra resources to cover them.

Resource assignment and account upgrade by FIWARE Lab administrators

This section describes how FIWARE Lab Node operators should process incoming requests. The process is simple and depicted below.

Account upgrade workflow

The FIWARE Lab administrators start processing the account upgrade when they receive the corresponding ticket. Each comment will be notified to the end-user that will be able to provide you further information in this way. For resource assignment/negotiation the guide in Section Quotas and Flavours will be considered.

If your FIWARE Lab node is not able to complete the assignment, we suggest that FIWARE Lab administrators makes a negotiation with other FIWARE Lab nodes in order to transfer the request and assign the resources in any other FIWARE Lab node. Of course, you should inform users about this migration assignment to confirm that it is ok for them.

How to assign resources to a new community user

To manage user information, you have to use the Horizon-based Cloud Portal interface at https://cloud.lab.fiware.org. In this web site, you can to click on the button Request Community Account and you will see a google form requesting the information required to set up a community account. Once the user has filled in all the information and submitted it, the process will start with the creation of the corresponding Jira ticket. The next steps that every FIWARE Lab administrator has to follow are the following:

  1. Start progressing the ticket as soon as you receive it.

  2. Check the requested resources and comment to inform the user about decision on resources, or additional information you need.

  3. If the user is not created you have to create it.

  4. If the user has not been granted access to any of the projects to create cloud resources, you have to create it and assign the user as a member of the project.

  5. Assign the role Community in the domain default to the user. The user can have several roles for different projects (owner, member, ...), however, it is a Community or a Trial user for the whole domain.

  6. Include in the metadata of the user (description field) the date in which the user has been upgraded to Community (with the format "community_started_at": "YYYY-MM-DD") and the duration of this community account expressed in days (with the format "community_duration": "DD").

  7. Assign the desired quotas in your FIWARE Lab node to the user.

  8. Assign the endpoint group of your FIWARE Lab node to the user’s project.

  9. If you need to contact the user you can use the email address included in the user detail.

  10. Progress to “done” when completed.

  11. Alternatively, if any impediment arises, move to impeded, and inform the user by commenting the ticket.

Procedure to create new FIWARE Lab user account

The process to create a new FIWARE Lab user account, includes a procedure to check that the email introduced is a valid email. During this process, FIWARE requests several information to the user to be filled in a google form. This information includes:

  • User name to be kept in the database.

  • User email to communicate any issue directly to the user.

  • Preferred FIWARE Lab node to be used.

  • Acceptance of the FIWARE Lab Terms & Conditions.

FIWARE Lab user creation form

All these data are mandatory to be fulfilled. This form activates a specific procedure to manage the creation of the FIWARE Lab user account.

FIWARE Lab user creation workflow

Once that the user submits this information an email will automatically be sent to the user using the email provided. This email includes in the subject (Betreff in German in the following picture) the confirmation code to be submitted. The user must reply to this email in order to confirm that the email is correct.

FIWARE Lab user creation, confirmation email template.

During this procedure, the reception of the confirmation email is mandatory in order to create the new user account. to create a new user. This confirmation is obtained through the response of this received email leaving intact the email's subject. The received response email, with the subject intact, is enough to validate the user's email and activate the JIRA ticket creation with the corresponding FIWARE Lab node administrator in order to create the corresponding user account. After the creation, the FIWARE Lab node administrator informs the users that the new account has been created and the recommendation to change the password by themselves.

The information of the user created (and eventually deleted) will be kept under Data Protection control for statistical purposes and evaluation of the creation and deletion of user accounts in the FIWARE Lab ecosystem.