Environment Setup Lab

The entire lab setup section is extremely important. Please read and understand it before continuing with the course. Most questions will be answered here.

1. Provision Your Lab Environment

Log in to the OPENTLC lab portal
Under Services, click Catalogs.
Expand the OPENTLC Datacenter Infrastructure Labs accordion.
Click RHEL 7 Implementation Lab.
If you cannot find RHEL 7 Implementation Lab, click All Services or OPENTLC.
Click the Order button.
To finish the process, click Submit.

After a few minutes, you should receive an email with details about how to connect to your lab environment. It takes about 20 minutes for your lab to fully start and be accessible.

Your instructor’s server is accessible via the hostname rhel-GUID.rhpds.opentlc.com where you replace GUID with a unique identifier for your lab.

You will get this host name and GUID in the email mentioned above.

2. Get Familiar with the Lab Environment

Your lab exercises use two computer systems: desktop and server
Hostnames for these machines are: desktop1.example.com and server1.example.com
- Your student number, the number in the hostnames, is always 1
Both machines have a standard user account:
- User: student
- Password: r3dh@t1!
The root, and any other accounts on both systems, also use the password r3dh@t1!
Your IPv4 network is 192.168.0.0/24
The rhel-GUID.rhpds.opentlc.com system also acts as a central utility server which provides a router for the lab networks as well as DNS, DHCP, HTTP, and other content services.

Table 1. Lab Machines
Machine name	IP addresses	Role
desktop1.example.com	192.168.0.1	Student "client" computer
server1.example.com	192.168.0.101	Student "server" computer
External: rhel-GUID.rhpds.opentlc.com Internal: instructor.example.com	192.168.0.254	Classroom utility server (accessible externally)

Your lab environment exists totally within the cloud. You have direct access to only one system, the instructor server. You do not, however, have root access to this server. When you provision your lab via the OPENTLC CloudForms system, you will receive an email that contains your instructor server’s external host name and IP address.

3. Access Your System via SSH

You can access your instructor system using an SSH client pointed to rhel-GUID.rhpds.opentlc.com.

The root password for the systems are locked out, so you cannot log in to the instructor system as root. You must log in to the instructor system using your OPENTLC SSO username plus your OPENTLC SSO SSH Key. Your OPENTLC SSO account is the same login that you used to provision the lab.

If you have not already registered your SSH Public Key with OPENTLC SSO, log in to OPENTLC Account Management and paste your public key there.

For more information on generating SSH keys see the link for your operating system:

4. Access Your Desktop System via the Web GUI

Your desktop system is accessible via an HTML5 remote console technology called Guacamole. Because it is HTML based, you do not need to install or run anything other than a web browser on your side.

One drawback of using Guacamole is that it is difficult to cut and paste text from your physical system. If you want to cut and paste, you should use SSH to connect to the instructor server and then use SSH to connect to the lab systems. For details, see Use the Instructor Server to Connect to Your Lab Systems via SSH later in this lab.

To access your remote console, point your web browser to: https://rhel-GUID.rhpds.opentlc.com/guacamole.
Be careful to type the URL above correctly; include HTTPS and replace GUID with your lab’s assigned GUID.
Use your OPENTLC SSO username and password to log in to Guacamole.
When logged in, start the web GUI by clicking Desktop-VNC.

You can also start web based SSH sessions for the desktop and server systems by clicking their names in the Guacamole landing page.

5. Adjust the Desktop Resolution in the Web GUI

If your GUI’s resolution is hard to see, you can lower it using the following procedure:

Click the Red Hat Shadowman logo in the lower-left corner.
In the Search box, enter display configuration.
In the search results, click Display Configuration Item to start the control panel.
Click the tiny white box with green arrows in it labeled Show list of available display resolutions.
Double-click the resolution that works best for you.
Click Apply.

6. Use the Instructor Server to Connect to Your Lab Systems via SSH

If you used SSH to connect directly to the lab server, you can then use SSH to connect to the desktop or server system as the student user.

Enter the following command:

bash-4.2$ ssh student@desktop1.example.com

When prompted, answer yes.
Enter the password for the student user provided earlier.

7. Check `server1.example.com` Status

You will be working a lot with server1.example.com which runs as a virtial machine on top of desktop1.example.com. You will not see this server in the VM or staus list you recieve from OPENTLC since it is run as a nested virtual machine. The server1.example.com virtual server name in virsh is vserver. Use the procedure below to make sure this VM is running:

Become root on desktop1.example.com using su and password r3dh@t1!:
```
[student@desktop1 ~]$ su
Password: r3dh@t1!
```
Check to see that vserver is running using virsh list:
```
[root@desktop1 student]# virsh list
```
If the output looks like this and there is NO vserver visible run the next step, otherwise continue to the next lab:
```
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
```
If you have to start vserver run virsh start vserver to start the virtual machine:
```
[root@desktop1 student]# virsh start vserver
Domain vserver started
```

Run virsh list again to make sure vserver is running:

[root@desktop1 student]# virsh list
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
 3     vserver                        running

8. Exit `root` Shell

Exit the root shell that you started in the last lab to check the status of vserver.

[root@desktop1 student]# exit