tiCrypt

Provisioning

AdministratorRequires: Admin or Super-Admin

Provisioning is where you set up what researchers can run. It covers the hosts that virtual machines run on, the VM images and hardware setups researchers choose from, and the Slurm clusters that run batch jobs.

Provisioning provides the machines. It does not give you access to what runs on them. An administrator combines an image and a hardware profile into a hardware setup, and a researcher then builds a VM configuration from it. From then on, the running machine belongs to whoever started it, and the administrator who set up the image and hardware cannot see inside it.

◆Why administrators control the hardware setups

Researchers pick from hardware setups instead of choosing any hardware they like, because a hardware setup is where your rules live: which image a machine boots from (and so its patch level and installed software), how much of the team quota it uses, and whether device passthrough or debug access is allowed. If users could build machines freely, those decisions would happen outside the audit trail.

Provisioning contains the following functionality

• Images & Hardware: register VM images and ISO images, define hardware profiles, and bundle them into the hardware setups researchers select.
• Infrastructure: register realms, libvirt hosts, storage pools, volumes, and passthrough devices.
• Building VM Images: build and prepare the Linux and Windows images that hardware setups reference.
• Slurm: configure and operate the Slurm clusters, nodes, worker VMs, and accounts that run batch jobs.

The provisioning chain

Each layer depends on the one before it, and a researcher only ever sees the last.

Layer	What it defines	Managed in
Realm	Binds compute, storage, and networking into one logical zone	Realms
Libvirt host	A physical or virtual server that runs VMs	Libvirt Hosts
Storage pool	The backend that encrypted drives are allocated from	Storage Pools
VM image	The operating system and pre-installed software a machine boots from	VM Images
Hardware profile	CPU, memory, and device allocation	Hardware Profiles
Hardware setup	An image paired with a profile, which is the unit researchers choose	Hardware Setups

Infrastructure

Realms

Logical groupings that bind hosts, storage, and networking.

Libvirt Hosts

Physical or virtual servers that run VMs.

Storage Pools

Storage backends that VM drives are allocated from.

Libvirt Volumes

Individual storage volumes within pools.

Devices

GPU and device passthrough configuration.

Images and hardware

VM Images

Operating system images that VMs boot from.

Hardware Profiles

Templates defining CPU, memory, and device allocation.

Hardware Setups

Bundled configurations pairing an image with a hardware profile.

ISO Images

ISO files available to mount inside VMs.

VM Configurations

Review the saved configurations researchers have built.

Building Images

Create and prepare Linux and Windows images from scratch.

Batch computing

Slurm Configuration

Configure the Slurm controller and partitions.

Nodes

Register and manage Slurm compute nodes.

Worker VMs

Manage the VMs that execute Slurm jobs.

Slurm Accounts

Map tiCrypt users and VMs to Slurm accounts.

Related

• VM Configurations: what researchers build from the hardware setups you publish.
• VM Roles and Permissions: why supplying the infrastructure does not grant access to the machines running on it.
• Governance: the teams and quotas that bound what researchers can provision.
• Monitoring & Audit: observe the instances actually running on this infrastructure.
• Secure HPC with Slurm: how tiCrypt's dual-Slurm architecture works.