How to Provision and Terminate Cloud Hosts

This section describes how to provision and terminate cloud hosts from ALM.

For an overview, see Provisioning Hosts Overview.

Provisioning Cloud Hosts

This task describes how to provision cloud hosts in ALM.

1. Prerequisites

   To provision hosts from ALM:

   • You must have at least one cloud account and at least one host template linked to your project. See How to Manage Cloud Accounts and How to Manage Host Templates for more information.
   • Your project must have enough cloud credits available to provision your desired hosts. See How to Manage Cloud Accounts for more information. If you do not have permission to add credits to a project, contact your lab administrator.

   When provisioning hosts, you need to supply the following:

   • Security Group. Specifies the incoming and outgoing network traffic allowed to your cloud hosts. For example, if you need to connect to your cloud hosts via Remote Desktop, your security group must allow incoming traffic over TCP port 3389 (RDP). Security groups are configured on the website of your cloud provider and are selected in ALM during provisioning. For more information about security groups, see Initial Cloud Settings Overview.
   • Key Pair. Allows you to connect remotely to your cloud hosts. For Windows hosts, the key pair is used to generate the main administrator password. For Linux hosts, the key pair is used to log in to the machine. Key pairs are created on the website of your cloud provider and are selected in ALM during provisioning. For more information about key pairs, see Initial Cloud Settings Overview.

   Note: Not applicable for Microsoft Azure cloud accounts.

   Note: Security groups and key pairs are created separately for each cloud location. Make sure that you have configured the necessary security groups and key pairs for the locations you will provision from.

   Note: HP Helion only supports elastic IP addresses. You cannot provision hosts using fixed IP addresses. For additional information, see the HP Helion Public Cloud Web site (http://www.hpcloud.com/).

2. Considerations when provisioning hosts

   When provisioning hosts, keep in mind:

   • The location where you provision hosts can impact the effectiveness of your testing. Make sure to select a cloud location that matches your testing needs.
   • Host templates are created separately for each location, so a template that exists in one location may not exist in a different location. Make sure that you know which locations contain the templates you need or that you add your desired templates to the locations you intend to provision from.

   • If you need to connect remotely to the provisioned hosts, make sure to select a key pair for which you have the private key and to select a security group that allows remote connections.

     Note: Not applicable for Microsoft Azure cloud accounts.

   • Hosts are provisioned in batches. All hosts provisioned in a single batch use the same account, location, and template, and have identical configurations. To provision different types of hosts, you must create different batches. A single provision request can include multiple batches of hosts.
3. Provision cloud hosts

   To provision cloud hosts:

   1. In Lab Management, go to Lab Resources > Hosts. In ALM, go to Lab Resources > Testing Hosts.
   2. Click the Provision... button . This opens the Provision Hosts Dialog Box. For more information, see Provision Cloud Hosts Dialog Box.

   3. Enter the details for each batch of hosts to be provisioned and click Add Batch.

      Note: You must have at least one credit to provision your requested hosts.

   4. After adding all necessary batches, click Provision. The hosts are queued for provisioning and the Cloud Provisioning Report opens.
4. Post provisioning

   The Host Provisioning Report shows you provisioning progress, and automatically refreshes to show updates. If there are any errors during provisioning, you will see them here. For more information, see Host Provisioning Report.

   Once your cloud hosts are provisioned, you can begin to use them for running tests.

   Note: There may be a delay of a few minutes between the time that a cloud host's status changes to Operational and the time that the host is ready for use.

   After provisioning is complete, the hosts begin to consume credits from your project.

Terminating Cloud Hosts

To terminate a cloud host:

1. In Lab Management, go to Lab Resources > Hosts. In ALM, go to Lab Resources > Testing Hosts.
2. Select a cloud host in the grid and click the Delete button . The cloud host is queued for termination.

It may take a few moments to terminate the host. After the host is terminated, it is removed from the Hosts grid.