EUMETSAT S3 Mount Flavour

This Ansible Playbook configures a virtual machine existing within the European Weather Cloud (EWC), enabling to access remote public EUMETSAT data buckets as if they were stored on a local disk.

Supports deployment to instances on both the ECMWF and the EUMETSAT compute sites of the EWC.

Features

• Self-service access to EUMETSAT data publicly available within the EWC (no credentials required)
• Strict file permissions for mounted directories under the /mnt directory
• Boot-safe design; does not block boot on S3 outage

Prerequisites

• Verify the ssh-https OpenStack Security Group exists in your EWC tenancy

  💡 You may create Security Groups via this EWC Community Hub Item if pre-required ones are missing.

Usage

Deploy via EWCCLI

⚠️ By default, deploying via EWCCLI is only possible from within your EWC private network. You may override by passing the --external-ip flag upon deployment. Caution is advised as this weakens security on the deployed VM.

1. Setup working environment

pip install ewccli

2. Configure access credentials

ewc login

3. Deploy

💡 To lean about EWCCLI deployment customization, checkout the EWC User Stories: I want to use the ewccli documentation pages.

ewc hub deploy eumetsat-s3-mount-flavour

Deploy via native tooling (Ansible)

1. Setup working environment

• Install git (version 2.0 or higher )

• Install python (version 3.9 or higher)

• Install ansible (version 2.15 or higher)

• If you plan to configure an existing VM, ensure it meets the minium requirements before proceeding:

  • VM Image: Ubuntu or RockyLinux
  • VM Plan: 4 CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 40GB Disk
  • Network: Private
  • Security Groups: ssh-https
  • Floating IP: Optional (not recommended from a security standpoint)

  Otherwise, provision a new VM with above specifications before continuing (see EWC Getting Started: Provision a VM for details).

2. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/ewcloud/ewc-ansible-playbook-flavours-and-provisioning.git

2.1. Change to the specific Item's subdirectory

cd playbooks/eumetsat-s3-mount-flavour

2.2. Checkout an specific Item's version

⚠️ Make sure to replace x.y.z in the command below, with your version of preference.

git checkout x.y.z

3. Download Ansible dependencies

💡 By default, Ansible Roles are installed under the ~/.ansible/roles directory within your working environment.

Download the correct version of the Ansible dependencies, if you haven't done so already:

ansible-galaxy role install --force -r requirements.yml

4. Specify the target host and SSH credentials

Create an inventory file, to specify address/credentials that your local working environment should use to connect to the target VM.

Copy into the file one of the two snippets below, and replace the placeholders (i.e. values enclosed in < > characters):

• To connect within the EWC private network

  # inventory.yml
  ---
  ewcloud:
    hosts:
      target:
        ansible_python_interpreter: auto
        ansible_host: <add the PRIVATE IP address of the target host>
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: <add the path to local SSH private key file>
        ansible_user: <add the default user according to your chosen VM image>
        ansible_ssh_common_args: -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
  

OR

• To connect from the public internet to a EWC public IP address

  # inventory.yml
  ---
  ewcloud:
    hosts:
      target:
        ansible_python_interpreter: auto
        ansible_host: <add the PUBLIC IP address of the target host>
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: <add the path to local SSH private key file>
        ansible_user: <add the default user according to your chosen VM image>
        ansible_ssh_common_args: -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
  

OR

• To connect from the public the public internet to a EWC private IP address

  ⚠️ This requires an SSH Bastion to be already provisioned within your EWC tenancy.

  # inventory.yml
  ---
  ewcloud:
    hosts:
      target:
        ansible_host: <add the PRIVATE IP address of the target host>
        ansible_ssh_user: <add the default user according to your chosen VM image>
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: <add the path to local SSH private key file>
        ansible_python_interpreter: auto
  
  all:
    vars:
      ansible_ssh_common_args: >-
        -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
        -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
        -o ProxyCommand="ssh
                        -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
                        -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
                        -o BatchMode=yes
                        -W %h:%p
                        -i <add the path to local SSH private key file>
                        cloud-user@<add the PUBLIC IP address of the SSH bastion>"
  
  

5. Configure and apply the template

• Interactive Mode

  By running the following command, you can trigger an interactive session that prompts you for the necessary user inputs, and then applies changes to your target EWC environment:

  ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml eumetsat-s3-mount-flavour.yml
  

OR

• Non-Interactive Mode

  💡 To learn more about defining variables at runtime, checkout the official Ansible documentation.

  You can also run in non-interactive mode by passing the --extra-vars or -e flag, followed by a map of key-value pairs; one for each and every available input (see inputs section below). For example:

  ansible-playbook \
    -i inventory.yml \
    -e '{
        "vfs_cache_mode":"writes",
        "vfs_cache_max_size":"512Mi"
      }' \
    eumetsat-s3-mount-flavour.yml
  

Inputs

💡 To learn more about the valid input values and their performance implications, checkout the rclone official documentation

Dependencies

💡 Upon execution, a SBOM (SPDX format) is auto-generated and stored in the VM's file system root directory (see /sbom.json).