How to deploy Anbox Cloud with Juju

Anbox Cloud Documentation
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Anbox Cloud supports various public clouds, such as AWS, Azure and Google. To deploy Anbox Cloud in a cloud environment, you use Juju.

See the following sections for detailed instructions. If you want to install Anbox Cloud on bare metal instead of a public cloud, see How to deploy Anbox Cloud on bare metal instead.

Note: There are differences between the full Anbox Cloud installation and the Anbox Cloud Appliance (see Variants). This section focuses on Anbox Cloud. For instructions on how to install the Anbox Cloud Appliance, see How to install the Anbox Cloud Appliance or the Install the Anbox Cloud Appliance on your local machine tutorial.

Prerequisites

Before you start the installation, ensure that you have the required credentials and prerequisites:

  • An Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (preferred) or 20.04 LTS environment to run the commands (or another operating system that supports snaps - see the Snapcraft documentation).
  • Account credentials for one of the following public clouds:
  • Your Ubuntu Pro token for either a full Ubuntu Pro subscription or a Ubuntu Pro (Apps-only) subscription. If you don’t have one yet, speak to your Canonical representative. If you already have a valid Ubuntu Pro token, sign in on https://ubuntu.com/pro to retrieve it.

    Warning: The Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) token that every user gets for free does NOT work and will result in a failed deployment. You must purchase a full Ubuntu Pro or a Ubuntu Pro (Apps-only) subscription by contacting Canonical.

Install Juju

Juju is a tool for deploying, configuring and operating complex software on public or private clouds.

To install Juju 2.9, enter the following command:

sudo snap install --classic --channel=2.9/stable juju

See Juju version for information about which Juju version is required for your version of Anbox Cloud.

Authenticate with your cloud

Juju has baked in knowledge of many public clouds, such as AWS, Azure and Google. You can see which ones are ready to use by running the following command:

juju clouds

Most clouds require credentials so that the cloud knows which operations are authorised, so you will need to supply these for Juju. If you choose to use AWS, for example, you would run:

juju add-credential aws

For a different cloud, just substitute the cloud name (use the name returned by the juju clouds command). The data you need to supply varies depending on the cloud.

Add a controller and model

The Juju controller is used to manage the software deployed through Juju, from deployment to upgrades to day-two operations. One Juju controller can manage multiple projects or workspaces, which in Juju are known as models.

For example, run the following command to bootstrap the controller for AWS:

juju bootstrap aws my-controller

A Juju model holds a specific deployment. It is a good idea to create a new one specifically for each deployment:

juju add-model anbox-cloud

You can have multiple models on each controller, which means that you can deploy multiple versions of Anbox Cloud, or other applications.

Attach your Ubuntu Pro subscription

Every deployment of Anbox Cloud must be attached to the Ubuntu Pro service Canonical provides. This provides your deployment with the correct licences you’re granted as part of your licence agreement with Canonical, next to other services available through your subscription like Livepatch.

You can retrieve your Ubuntu Pro token at https://ubuntu.com/pro after logging in. You should record the token as you will need it for every deployment of Anbox Cloud.

Warning: The Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) token that every user gets for free does NOT work and will result in a failed deployment. You must purchase a full Ubuntu Pro or a Ubuntu Pro (Apps-only) subscription by contacting Canonical.

To provide your token when deploying with Juju, you need an overlay file named ua.yaml. For the anbox-cloud bundle, the ua.yaml file should look like this:

applications:
  ams:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  ams-node-controller:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  lxd:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  anbox-stream-agent:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  anbox-stream-gateway:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  anbox-cloud-dashboard:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>

For the anbox-cloud-core bundle, the ua.yaml file should look like this:

applications:
  ams:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  ams-node-controller:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>
  lxd:
    options:
      ua_token: <your token>

You will use the overlay file during the deployment.

Deploy Anbox Cloud

Note: This section explains how to start the Anbox Cloud deployment without any customisation. However, in most cases you will want to include a custom configuration when you start the deployment.

Therefore, make sure to check the following sections before you run the deploy command.

To install Anbox Cloud, deploy the suitable Anbox Cloud bundle to the Juju model. This will add instances to the model and deploy the required applications.

Choose between the available Juju bundles:

  • For a minimised version of Anbox Cloud without the streaming stack, run the following command to deploy the anbox-cloud-core bundle:

      juju deploy anbox-cloud-core --overlay ua.yaml

  • For the full version of Anbox Cloud, run the following command to deploy the anbox-cloud bundle:

      juju deploy anbox-cloud --overlay ua.yaml

Customise the hardware configuration

To customise the machine configuration Juju will use for the deployment, create another overlay file. Here you can, for example, specify AWS instance types, change the size or source of the root disk or other things. See the complete list of constraints in the Juju documentation for details.

For the anbox-cloud-core bundle, such an overlay.yaml file looks like this:

machines:
  '0':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '1':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"

For the anbox-cloud bundle, the overlay.yaml file includes one more machine in the default configuration:

machines:
  '0':
    series: focal
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '1':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '2':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '3':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.2xlarge root-disk=50G"

To deploy, add --overlay overlay.yaml to your deploy command. For example:

juju deploy anbox-cloud --overlay ua.yaml --overlay overlay.yaml

Customise storage

By default, Anbox Cloud uses a loop file with an automatically calculated size for LXD storage. For optimal performance, however, you should use a dedicated block storage device. See LXD storage for more information.

The easiest way to do this is to use a storage device defined by Juju:

  1. Decide which Juju storage pool you want to use.

    See View the available storage pools in the Juju documentation for instructions on how to display existing storage pools. If you are running on AWS, for example, you can use the existing ebs-ssd pool.

    If you want to use a new pool, see Create a storage pool in the Juju documentation for instructions. It can also be useful to create a Juju storage pool if you want to use a specific volume type that is optimised for your setup. For example, AWS provides EBS volume types that are optimised for different purposes.

    If you decide to create a pool, make sure to do so before you start the deployment.

  2. Configure the ams-lxd charm to use the Juju storage pool.

    The ams-lxd charm defines an optional storage pool (see the metadata.yaml file in the ams-lxd charm). To make the LXD charm use this storage pool, you must configure a storage constraint for it.

    For example, to use the AWS ebs-ssd Juju storage pool for LXD storage, use an overlay file with the following storage constraint:

    applications:
  lxd:
    storage:
      pool: ebs-ssd,100GB,1

    Note: You can add only one storage pool.

When you deploy Anbox Cloud with this configuration, Juju allocates the requested storage and attaches it to LXD. During initialisation, AMS then configures LXD to create a ZFS storage pool on the configured storage.

Add GPU support

On most clouds, adding GPU support is done by picking a specific instance type. The following example uses the g4dn.xlarge instance type on AWS, which includes an NVIDIA Tesla T4 GPU.

The overlay.yaml file for the anbox-cloud bundle looks like this:

machines:
  '0':
    series: focal
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '1':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '2':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m4.xlarge root-disk=40G"
  '3':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=g4dn.2xlarge root-disk=50G"

To deploy, add --overlay overlay.yaml to your deploy command. For example:

juju deploy anbox-cloud --overlay ua.yaml --overlay overlay.yaml

Use Arm instances

Some clouds, like AWS with their Graviton instances, provide support for Arm instance types. These can be used with Anbox Cloud by specifying the correct instance type in the overlay.yaml:

applications:
  lxd:
    # With Juju >= 2.9.0 we must specify the architecture of the underlying machine
    # in the constraints of the application
    constraints: "arch=arm64"
machines:
  ...
  '3':
    series: jammy
    constraints: "instance-type=m6g.2xlarge root-disk=50G"

To deploy, add --overlay overlay.yaml to your deploy command. For example:

juju deploy anbox-cloud --overlay ua.yaml --overlay overlay.yaml

Monitor the deployment

After starting the deployment, Juju will create instances, install software and connect the different parts of the cluster together. This can take several minutes. You can monitor what’s going on by running the following command:

watch -c juju status --color

Perform necessary reboots

In some cases, a reboot of the LXD machines is necessary.

Check the output of the juju status command to see whether you need to reboot:

...
Unit       Workload  Agent  Machine  Public address  Ports  Message
lxd/0*     active    idle   3        10.75.96.23            reboot required to activate new kernel
...

To reboot the machine hosting LXD, run the following command:

juju ssh lxd/0 -- sudo reboot

When the machine is back running, you must manually clear the status of the LXD units:

juju run-action --wait lxd/0 clear-notification

Once done, the reboot operation is finished.

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