Using the OpCenter Web Interface

Accessing the OpCenter Web Interface

Navigating the OpCenter Web Interface

Applying the OpCenter License

Submit Job

If you click the Start from Scratch tab, the screen divides into two parts. On the left-hand side, you fill in the fields in a form and then submit a job. The right-hand side shows the equivalent CLI commands. You can begin by selecting a job template from the drop-down menu in which case some of the fields are prepopulated (although they can be edited). After completing the form, submit the job by clicking Submit at the bottom, on the right.

If you click the Apply a Template tab, you must select a template from the left-hand panel. The center panel shows the parameters that are built into the template The right-hand panel shows additional fields that you can fill in. Submit the job by clicking Submit at the bottom, on the right.

Cost Summary

The Cost Summary screen summarizes your cloud spending in a single dashboard. View cloud costs and savings by week, month, year, application, or user. An estimate of the associated carbon emissions is also displayed.

When you instantiate a VM, the CSP begins charging (in one second increments) for the compute instance and any storage devices you configure. You must configure disk space for the root volume (where the operating system is stored) and normally you configure additional disk space for your data (the data volume). VMs instantiated by OpCenter include two additional disk volumes: the image volume (to store the container image) and the snapshot volume (to store snapshots).

The default size for the root volume is 40 GB. If this volume is used for an entire month, the charge would be about USD 4.

Cloud cost for a single job is calculated as follows.

Cloud cost = Instance cost + data volume cost + image volume cost + snapshot volume cost

where the Instance can be an On-demand Instance or a Spot Instance. The root volume cost is not included.

Net savings is calculated by comparing what the cost would be if the job were run on an On-demand Instance, not using OpCenter, with the Cloud Cost. That is,

Net savings = On-demand cost - Actual instance cost - image volume cost - snapshot volume cost

Cloud Cost and Net Savings for each job are aggregated to arrive at the numbers reported per week, per month, etc.

The bottom part of the Cost Summary screen shows estimates of the carbon emissions attributed to the jobs you ran. The estimates are aggregated by week, month, and year.

Jobs

On the Jobs screen, you can view and manage current jobs, and you can view job history. You can search for jobs and filter the displayed results. Click a job to display detailed information about the job, including logs and graphs of resource utilization over time.

To suspend, resume, rerun, or cancel a job, identify the job by ID or by name. In the Actions column are icons corresponding to actions that you can perform on the job. Clicking an icon brings up a dialog box. Fill in the dialog box to complete the action.

More actions, including migrate and modify, are available on the Job Details screen (click the job ID to bring up this screen).

To view the logs associated with a current or archived job, click the job ID. In the displayed table, click Attachments to list the logs associated with the job. Click the Preview icon to view the contents of a log.

To view a graphical display of resource utilization associated with a current or archived job, click the job ID and then click the WaveWatcher tab in the displayed table.

Workflows

A workflow is a collection of tasks (there can be hundreds) assembled into a coordinated pipeline. The Workflows screen displays all workflows by name. Clicking a workflow name brings up the Workflow Details screen that displays all the tasks started as part of that workflow as well as aggregate metrics of the entire workflow.

The Workflow Details screen has two tabs: Jobs (shows details of each job in the workflow) and Timeline (shows a graphical display of when the tasks start and stop).

Job Templates

The MMCloud CLI supports an extensive set of commands, subcommands, and options to customize the runtime environment for each job. In some cases, the command string to submit a job can be long. To simplify usage, job templates preconfigure the command string (or equivalently, prepopulate fields in the Submit Job screen). The Job Templates screen displays the currently available templates. The Built-in tab lists the job templates that are preloaded as part of the OpCenter software. The Private tab lists the job templates that you create by saving previously scheduled jobs as templates.

Click a job template to display the parameters that are preconfigured. Click Submit Job to use the template as the preliminary configuration in the Submit Job screen where all fields can be edited in the Start from Scratch screen.

App Library

The App Library screen shows the container images that are currently loaded into the OpCenter image library. The display shows images that are automatically loaded (Built-in) as well as images that you add (Private). To add an image, go to the Private tab and click Add Image.

If a job is submitted using the image URI (instead of the image name), the image is automatically pulled from the repository specified by the URI and loaded into the App Library as a Private image.

Images with the status listed as Ready are currently loaded into the OpCenter's image cache.

To delete an image from the Private library, identify the image and then click the Delete Image icon in the Actions column.

SERVICE

Most jobs are submitted as batch jobs that run for a finite time. A SERVICE is a special class of job: a job that runs for an extended time to provide a service to clients that connect to back-end servers. An example of a service is a gateway (or reverse proxy) that connects web clients to virtual machines acting as RStudio or Jupyter servers.

The SERVICE menu shows the currently supported services. Click a service to display a screen with configuration and other information related to that service.

ADMINISTRATION

SurfZone

SurfZone is a feature that helps users control monthly cloud costs, including compute and storage volumes, that are generated by running jobs using MMCloud. Use the SurfZone screen to define a quota policy, that is, a monthly spending limit, the action taken when the limit is reached, the action taken when the limit is increased or the quota replenished, and the threshold for alerting users that the limit is approaching.

After defining the quota policy, use the Users and Groups screen to assign users to quota policies.

Users and Groups

The Users and Groups screen shows information about users and groups. If you log in as the admin user, you see all users and groups. If you log in as a user who is not in the admin group, you see the groups that user belongs to and the users in those groups.

You can add users to (or delete users from) the groups that are visible to you. Only the admin user can add or delete groups.

System Settings

Use the System Settings to change parameters that apply to the operation of the OpCenter server or that act as the default settings for jobs submitted to the OpCenter.