NeCTAR cloud lesson plan V1.0.2

This course aims to teach the basics of the NeCTAR cloud to researchers over a one day workshop.

Motivator

It’s been hyped: but the Cloud does offer serious value in terms of cost and instant availability to researchers. However, it’s a complex tool and if you don’t know and understand its constraints trying to make use of it can end in painful tears. This course introduces you to the the tools and the underlying concepts of the NeCTAR cloud - thus reducing your risk and saving you time and trouble in your journey to the cloud. And given the scale and low price of the research cloud you will, most likely, be making that journey.

Folders

The directories that make up this project are as follows:

• Promotion - Promotional material to use in advance of the course
• Prerequisites - What we would like students and trainers to do before they step through the door
• Planning - The planning material that we used to develop the course
• Lessons - The lessons themselves
• Resources - The resources that students will be using during the course

Instructors notes

Delivering the lessons

The lessons assume that participants have both red and green coloured sticky notes and cards lettered from "A" through to "E" (in the style of Software Carpentry). These are used to answer questions and to show distress if the students aren't keeping up or need help.

When giving the lessons:

Try to engage the audience.

• Ask them to provide explanations of what has just been done.
• Or ask questions of them.

So for, example,

• each time a bash command previously introduced is used point to people randomly and ask them what the command means...
• when you are typing bash commands ask for participants to tell you what to type at each space and slash in the bash script...

In general

Each person being taught needs to be given

• a red sticky note
• a green sticky note.
• A set of answer cards, lettered 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D' and 'E' respectively. It is useful if each letter is on a different colour card.
• a set of three envelopes, at least one of which fits inside the other two, to describe ssh and man in the middle attacks.

The image used for the lessons is named res_os_drupal7. Check that it is still around and works as expected before the lesson. If you need to rebuild it, there are instructions in the file named CreatingTheImageForTheWorkshop.md in the Resources folder.

Distribute the prerequisites to participants: with an offer to help if they have problems in following them.

Contact the allocation approver for the node where the course will be delivered in advance of the course to let them know that there might be some people requesting an allocation in order to be able to take part.

Prerequisites

• Each student will need a laptop with wifi access.
• The room must allow students to connect to the Internet via wifi.
• Each student on the course must have an AAF logon.
• Each person must have an allocation on the Research Cloud that they can use.

For those that have expired trial projects we can:

• get to pair up with others
• have a special tenancy for the lesson, and then them to it on the fly. This is not a great solution as people in the tenancy will step on each others toes.
• have someone on hand to extend their trial tenancies on the spot?

If we could get participants AAF credentials before hand, we could:

• pre-create a special allocation for each person on the course that dies the day after the course.
• run a query to check if they are part of any project, and the status of their project.

Git

If you check this repository out be aware that it uses Git submodules to manage the reveal.js dependency. To also clone reveal.js, you will have to either:

# fetch it all in one hit
git clone --recursive https://github.com/resbaz/nectar-cloud-lessons.git

Or:

# take it step by step
git clone https://github.com/resbaz/nectar-cloud-lessons.git
git submodule init
git submodule update

To regenerate the slides

The SlideExtractor.jar in the root directory will re-create the slides if needed.

To run it ensure that the java version installed is java 8:

java -version

should return something along the lines of java version "1.8.0_65".

If it doesn't then install java 8 from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/overview/java8-2100321.html

Then in a command prompt in the root directory simply issue:

java -jar SlideExtractor.jar

You should see something like the following fly by:

Working on: ./Lessons/010.Openstack.mapped.by.the.dashboard.md
Writing to: ./Presentation/010.Openstack.mapped.by.the.dashboard.html
    .
    .
    .
Working on: ./Lessons/090.Security.discussion.md
Writing to: ./Presentation/090.Security.discussion.html
Writing to: ./Presentation/index.html

Remember to always walk through your slides when you regenerate them!

Todo's

1. Update the prerequisites on this page (also make more clear the skills expected of the trainer).
2. Add a note about the google group.
3. Check and add putty's scp to lesson 4
4. Make the VM auto-mount the extra transient drive on start up...
5. Investigate the alternate to XWindows suggested by the brisbane course
6. What about a code of conduct: http://software-carpentry.org/conduct/
7. Add a suitable etherpad/set of etherpads

Nice to have's

1. Check that all red/green questions have the answer rephrase the question, if possible...
2. Possibly add an FAQ of synonym's? Have things like drive, PC, server, IP, Web address, HTTP, link etc...
3. As a Chromebook user can I have an online SSH like resbaz.cloud.edu shell tool? Crosh Or Chrome Shell
4. Could we use three cup game, three card monty, etc. as example of moving data files around on your local and remote server?
5. Should we create a booklet for attendees to take away with them - and to use during the session?

Versioning

Each version below will have an associated tag: hence enabling people to switch to a particular point in time, if need be. But development will continue unabated on the master branch...

We have a whimsical 3 digit version number: but the truth is that there is no real schema in play. The version number simply indicates a point in time. This is done so that if you want to teach to a particular version of the material, you can.

Version	Description	Date
1.0.0	First release	30th March 2016
1.0.1	Incorporated feedback from delivery at UniMelb	17th April 2016
1.0.2	Incorporated feedback from delivery at UniMelb	10th May 2016