OMERO.VM Application

[szwells]

Currently the VM scripts are a single folder of scripts which require a certain amount of setup before they are run, e.g.

• creating a .VirtualBox/HardDisks/? folder,
• copy VDI to it,
• &c.

The scripts should be refactored into a shell application having the following structure:

    /bin
    /cache
    /config
    /docs
    /keys
    /logs
    /scripts
    /vdi
    /virtual.appliances
    INSTALL
    README

INSTALL will:

• setup the above file structure,
• populate /vdi with the correct|latest|specified VDI from the OMERO website
• create an initial base config file in /config
• populate /bin with the user facing scripts from the omero git repo
• populate /scripts with the non-user facing scripts from the omero git repo
• populate /docs with OMERO.VM documentation from the omero git repo

The following folders are less static:

• /cache /keys /logs will all be populated as the scripts run to create new virtual machines
  • /cache will cache apt packages to reduce network load when creating *n* VMs
  • /keys will store DSA keys for the various VMs so that multiple VMs can be provisioned
  • /logs will store logfiles from the VM creation process to allow easy bug-fixing & tracking

The user should be able to specify config files for individual VMs so that a number of deployment scenarios can be targeted, e.g.

• load balancing OMERO components across individual VMs
• Provisioning automatically a range of VMs using different codebases, e.g. specify 3 new VMs installed with OMERO 4.3.1, 4.2.2, & trunk respectively.
• support scripted cluster deployment & management #2743.
• cloud appliance #2743
• Desktop VM (Linux VM + GUI) that supports the user logging in to a graphical environment #2745 & is supported by OMERO livery #2741. NB. This might be a candidate for an OMERO demo disk/liveDVD

[jmoore]

Breaking off of #2678 and turning into a story.

[jburel]

Docker is the chosen solution. Closing this story