Techila Distributed Computing Engine Advanced Edition in Google Cloud Platform Marketplace

Using your web browser, navigate to Google Cloud Platform Marketplace page:

Click on Explore Marketplace

Type Techila in the search box and click on the matching search result.

Click the Launch on Google Cloud Platform button to continue.

After clicking the launch button, a new page will be displayed. The appearance of this page will depend on whether or not billing has been setup for your Google Cloud Platform account.

In order to deploy the Techila distributed computing environment, you will either need to create a new or choose an existing Google Cloud Platform project. This Google Cloud Platform project will contain all Techila resources created during the deployment. For the sake of clarity, a new project will be created in the steps described in this document.

After the project has been created, define a name for the deployment, define a new Service Account and select a geographical Zone where you want to have the system deployed. Typically it is good practice to choose a geographical zone that is close to your computer’s location. This will help reduce the network latency between your computer and the Techila Server. More information about Zones can be found at:

Wait for the deployment to complete. This may take several minutes. After the deployment has been completed, a screen similar to one below will be shown where all resources are shown in Created status.

Switch to the Details tab. Then click the eye icon to display the Admin Password. You can then copy the password into the clipboard. Then click on the Dashboard Url link to open the Techila Dashboard login page.

After clicking the link, you should see a login page. Note! If the Techila Server deployment is not ready, you will see the following message:

After logging in, you will be presented the first page of the Techila wizard. This wizard will be used to download the application plugins (delivered in a file called TechilaSDK.zip) from the Techila Server.

In the first page of the Techila Dashboard, click the highlighted link to start downloading the application plugins (TechilaSDK.zip) to your computer.

Save the TechilaSDK.zip file on your computer.

Wait for the download to complete. After the download has been completed, you should have a file called 'TechilaSDK.zip' as illustrated in the example screenshot below. Please make a mental note where you saved the file, as you will need it when configuring the application plugins in the following steps.

Select your web browser and click the Continue button.

After clicking the Continue button, the second page of the Techila Dashboard will be displayed. This page contains a link to a help page, which contains instructions on how to configure the application plugins on your computer.

Select your web browser and navigate to Techila Dashboard using the Done button.

The Techila Dashboard is used to adjust the computing throughput by starting and shutting down Techila Worker VM instances. Click the Show deployment button to display the deployment panel.

To start Techila Workers, choose the operating system that matches the one you are using on your development machine, select Techila Worker VM instance type and define how many Techila Worker VM instances you want to start.

After clicking the button, the deployment process for the Techila Workers will start. Progress information will be displayed in the Operations view (click to expand). As Techila Workers come online, they will visible under Worker status.

After you have started Techila Workers, you can create a computational Project to test that everything works. You can use the Techila Dasboard to view progress information and statistics about the computeions.

Verify functionality by executing one of examples included in the Techila SDK. Examples for R, Python and MATLAB can be found in the following Techila SDK directories:

After verifying that the Techila Distributed Computing Engine environment works as expected, you can continue by adding the Techila Distributed Computing Engine functionality to your own application and running it in Techila Distributed Computing Engine.

After you have completed processing computational workloads, it is recommended to delete ALL Techila Workers VM instances to prevent unnecessary costs from being incurred. Instructions for deleting Techila Worker VM instances can be found in Decreasing Computing Throughput.

Using your browser, open Techila Dashboard (the page that was bookmarked earlier).

Click the Stop button to delete all ALL Techila Worker VM instances that are currently running.

After clicking the button, verity that the Techila Worker VM instances were successfully deleted by doing checks described in the following steps.

Wait for the operation to complete and verify that the Techila Workers were removed from the the Worker status view.

In the Google Cloud Platform Console, navigate to:

Verify that there are no instance groups that start with the deployment name you specified when deploying Techila Distributed Computing Engine. For example, if your deployment is named 'techila-1', make sure that there are no instance groups that have a name starting with 'techila-1'.

If required, confirm the action.

After ensuring that there are no Techila Worker related instance groups running, the only Techila related VM in your Google environment is the Techila Server.

Navigate to the Google Cloud Platform Console:

In the search box, type compute engine and click on the matching search result to navigate to the Compute Engine view.

Tick the checkbox for your Techila Server VM instance and click the Stop button. Note! Make sure to click on the Stop button, do not click on the Delete button. Your Techila Server VM instance name will be <your deployment name>-instance.

When prompted, confirm the action.

Navigate to the Google Cloud Platform Console located at:

In the search box, type compute engine and click on the matching search result to navigate to the Compute Engine view.

In the VM instances view, tick the checkbox next to your Techila Server VM instance and click the `Start button to start the VM instance.

When prompted, confirm the action.

After starting the Techila Server VM instance, please follow instructions in Accessing the Techila Dashboard to access the Techila Dashboard.

Delete ALL Techila Worker VM instances as described in Decreasing Computing Throughput

In the Google Cloud Platform Console, locate the Cloud Storage bucket used by your Techila deployment and delete the bucket. The bucket name will resemble the following: b_<yourproject>_<yourdeploymentname>

In the Google Cloud Platform Console, type deployments in the search box and click the matching search result to open the Deployments view.

Locate the deployment you have been using for your Techila Distributed Computing Engine components and click on the deployment name of it.

Clieck the DELETE button.

When prompted, confirm the action by entering the name of the deployment and clicking CONFIRM.

Wait for the deployment to be deleted. After the deployment has been deleted, it will no longer be visible on the Solution deployments page as illustrated below.

Using your web browser, navigate to Google Cloud Platform Marketplace page:

Click on Explore Marketplace

Type Techila in the search box and click on the matching search result.

Scroll down and download the deployment files (techila.zip) to the computer where your Google Cloud SDK is installed.

Extract the techila.zip file to the computer where your Google Cloud SDK is installed. In the example below, the files have been extracted to C:\temp\techila.

Open a command prompt / shell and set your current working directory to match the location where the files are located.

gcloud --project=<yourprojectID> deployment-manager deployments create <yourdeploymentname> --template=techila.jinja --properties="region:'europe-west1',zone:'europe-west1-d',machineType:'n1-standard-4',diskSizeGb:256"

After the deployment has been completed, the view should resemble the one shown below:

Retrieve the IP address and admin password by using the gcloud deployment-manager manifests describe command. In the example snippet below, the information for my-techila-deployment is retrieved and the output reduced by using grep (Linux) and findstr (Windows). The relevant values are highlighted in the image below.

gcloud deployment-manager manifests describe --deployment my-techila-deployment | findstr finalValue
gcloud deployment-manager manifests describe --deployment my-techila-deployment | grep finalValue

You can now log in to the Techila Dashboard by using your web browser and navigating to the IP displayed in the output. You will need to build the URL as follows:

When prompted, log in as admin user by using the password displayed when you ran the previous command.

You can now continue as described in Downloading and Configuring the Application Plugins.

Using your web browser, navigate to your Techila Dashboard view.

In the Techila Dashboard, select the base operating system you want to use (Windows or Linux). If you have already created a custom image and want to make further modifications to it, you can select the custom image.

In the Advanced Instance Options section, make sure Public IP address is set to On

In the Advanced Instance Options section, make sure that Disk type is set to Boot disk only.

In the Number of worker nodes, set the count to 1.

Click the Start button to start the Techila Worker. Wait until the Techila Worker is running. This may take several minutes.

Note! If you started a Techila Worker that has a Windows operating system, you will need to configure the firewall to allow TCP port 3389. This port will be used when you establish the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the Techila Worker. The following steps describe how to configure the firewall. The following steps will only need to be done once per deployment.

Establish a remote connection to the VM. Instructions for this can be found here:

After establishing a remote connection to the Techila Worker, install the software you want to include in your custom image. Please note that the Techila Worker processes (including the actual Jobs) will run under user techila-worker and will need to have access to software.

After you have installed all required software on the Techila Worker, test that everything works. A comprehensive test would be to run an actual computational Project that uses the functionality of the software you just installed. You can remain connected to the Techila Worker while you are running the tests.

After verifying that everything is working as intended, return to the Techila Dashboard, enter a descriptive name for the image and create the image.

After the image has been created, the new custom image will be listed in the Computing environment menu. You can now choose the custom image to make the previously installed software available on all Techila Workers.

Using your web browser, navigate to the Google Cloud Platform Console:

In the search box, type solution deployments and click on the matching search result to navigate to the Compute Engine view.

Locate your Techila deployment and click on the deployment name.

Switch to the Details tab. Then click the eye icon to display the Admin Password. You can then copy the password into the clipboard. Then click on the Dashboard Url link to open the Techila Dashboard login page.

Enter 'admin' as the username. In the password field, copy the Password value from the Google Cloud Platform Console to the password field as shown in the screen capture. Click the Log in button to log in.

Log in to the Google Cloud Console

Check that you are using the correct project. After checking, enter "solution deployments" in the search box and click the matching search result.

Click on your Techila Distributed Computing Engine deployment.

Click to change to the Details tab. Check which zone your deployment is running in and make a mental note of it. When making the quota increase request, this is the zone that will need to be used.

Next we will start making the quota increase request. In the search box, enter quota and click the matching search result (All Quotas).

You should see Quotas & System Limits to view the quotas for your project. There will be quite a lot of information in the default view, as shown below.

Next we will add some filters to reduce the amount of information displayed. In the Filter menu, add filters as shown in the screenshot below replacing the region with you deployment region.

Note! The instance types in the list below have separate CPU quotas. If you plan on using any of the the instance types as Techila Workers, you will also need to select metrics for these instance types and ask for a quota increase.

Note! You might also need to request a quota increase for your CPUs quota for all regions, in addition to requesting a region specific quota increase.

You should now have the metrics selected and the view should resemble the one shown below (quota amounts might differ). If you selected additional quotas, they should also be displayed.

Make the quota increase request. Each Techila Worker will require an IP address, meaning when increasing the CPU core quota, it is a good idea to also increase the IP address quota.

Fill in the amount of CPU cores you need. In this example value 1024 is used. The IP address amount should be set to the same value to ensure that you don’t run out of IP addresses when deploying instances with 1 CPU core. Enter a description and click Done. Then click Next.

Finally, fill in your contact details and click the Submit request button.

A confirmation message should be displayed.

When the quota has been increased, you should receive a confirmation email to your inbox in the email address you entered earlier. The screenshot below illustrates the relevant part of the confirmation email.

After receiving the confirmation email, the Techila Dashboard will automatically detect the increased quota and you will be able to start instances using the increased quota.

Log in to the Google Cloud Console

Click Billing.

Click Reports.

The Reports page can be used to extract billing information. The filter options on the right hand side of the page can be used to define the type of billing information that will be extracted and how it will be presented.

In the filter settings, set the time range to Current month. Set Group by to Project. Tip! If you want a breakdown on how much money was spent on Techila License Fees and how much was spent on other cloud components, you can set Group by to SKU.

Open the Projects dropdown menu and select the project you want to extract the billing information from. This should be the same project you are using for your TDCE deployment.

Check that the Products dropdown menu has selected all items.

Check that the SKUs dropdown menu has selected all items. Please note that when all SKUs are selected, the report will include the costs generated by any Google components in the specified project. This means that if you have, for example, some virtual machines set up in the project that are not generated by the TDCE system (e.g. a development virtual machine that you have set up manually) , they will also be included in the bill.

Log in to the Google Cloud Console and open the Compute Engine view.

Click VM Instances, select your Techila Server VM and click the Stop icon to stop the Techila Server.

After the instance has been stopped, click Disks.

The view on the Disks section will depend on the version of your TDCE environment.

After opening the disk view, the current size of the disk size is shown under the Size heading. In the example screenshot below, the current disk size is 256 GB. Click on the Edit icon to edit the disk.

Specify the new, desired disk size in the Size field and click Save.

Next, you can restart your Techila Server VM. Open the Compute Engine view, click VM Instances, select your Techila Server VM and click the Start icon to start the Techila Server.

The Techila Server will now use the new, larger disk for storing data. You can now log in to the Techila Dashboard and continue using the system normally. Instrucions for logging in can be found in the following Chapter: Accessing the Techila Dashboard

Log in to the Google Cloud Console and open the Compute Engine view.

Click VM Instances, select your Techila Server VM and click the Stop icon to stop the Techila Server.

Click on the Techila Server instance name.

Click on the Edit icon.

Click the Customize link to expand the settings view.

Set the CPU and Memory amounts to the desired amounts and click Save. The VM will now be updated to match the settings.

Next, you can restart your Techila Server VM. Open the Compute Engine view, click VM Instances, select your Techila Server VM and click the Start icon to start the Techila Server.

The Techila Server will now use the new instance type. You can now log in to the Techila Dashboard and continue using the system normally. Instrucions for logging in can be found in the following Chapter: Accessing the Techila Dashboard