Training Infrastructure as a Service (TIaaS)

Authors: orcid logoAvatarHelena Rasche orcid logoAvatarSaskia Hiltemann
Overview
Questions:

  • How to deploy EU’s TIaaS

Objectives:

  • Setup TIaaS

  • Request and manage trainings

  • Join a training

Requirements:
Time estimation: 30 minutes
Supporting Materials:
Last modification: Oct 18, 2022
License: Tutorial Content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License The GTN Framework is licensed under MIT

Galaxy is widely used for teaching. In order to facilitate instructors, Galaxy Europe has developed Training Infrastructure as a Service (TIaaS). Workshop instructors can apply for TIaaS, and on the day of their workshop, their participants will be placed in a special group and use dedicated resources, thus reducing queue times on the day of the training.

TIaaS concept.
Figure 1: With TIaaS, all of your users visit the same server. In the background, the scheduler recognises which users are training users, and directs their jobs to special resources. In the EU deployment of TIaaS jobs preferentially use private resources, but can spill over to the main queue if there is not enough space available.

This tutorial will go cover how to set up such a service on your own Galaxy server.

Agenda
  1. Setting up TIaaS
  2. Job Configuration
Comment: Galaxy Admin Training Path

The yearly Galaxy Admin Training follows a specific ordering of tutorials. Use this timeline to help keep track of where you are in Galaxy Admin Training.

  1. Step 1 ansible-galaxy
  2. Step 2 tus
  3. Step 3 cvmfs
  4. Step 4 singularity
  5. Step 5 tool-management
  6. Step 6 data-library
  7. Step 7 connect-to-compute-cluster
  8. Step 8 job-destinations
  9. Step 9 pulsar
  10. Step 10 gxadmin
  11. Step 11 monitoring
  12. Step 12 tiaas
  13. Step 13 reports
  14. Step 14 ftp

Setting up TIaaS

Hands-on: Setup TIaaS

  1. In your requirements.yml add the TIaaS ansible role:

    -- a/requirements.yml
++ b/requirements.yml
@ -36,3 +36,5 @@
  version: 0.14.2
- src: dj-wasabi.telegraf
  version: 0.12.0
- src: usegalaxy_eu.tiaas2
  version: 0.0.8

    And run the install step:

    Input: Bash
    ansible-galaxy install -p roles -r requirements.yml

    If you haven’t worked with diffs before, this can be something quite new or different.

    If we have two files, let’s say a grocery list, in two files. We’ll call them ‘a’ and ‘b’.

    We can see that they have some different entries. We’ve removed 🍒 because they’re awful, and replaced them with an 🍍

    Diff lets us compare these files

    Here we see that 🍒 is only in a, and 🍍 is only in b. But otherwise the files are identical.

    There are a couple different formats to diffs, one is the ‘unified diff’

    This is basically what you see in the training materials which gives you a lot of context about the changes:

    • --- old is the ‘old’ file in our view
    • +++ new is the ‘new’ file
    • @@ these lines tell us where the change occurs and how many lines are added or removed.
    • Lines starting with a - are removed from our ‘new’ file
    • Lines with a + have been added.

    So when you go to apply these diffs to your files in the training:

    1. Ignore the header
    2. Remove lines starting with - from your file
    3. Add lines starting with + to your file

    The other lines (🍊/🍋 and 🥑) above just provide “context”, they help you know where a change belongs in a file, but should not be edited when you’re making the above change. Given the above diff, you would find a line with a 🍒, and replace it with a 🍍

    Removals are very easy to spot, we just have removed lines

    And additions likewise are very easy, just add a new line, between the other lines in your file.

    Completely new files look a bit different, there the “old” file is /dev/null, the empty file in a Linux machine.

    And removed files are similar, except with the new file being /dev/null

  2. In your galaxyservers group variables file, add the following:

    -- a/group_vars/galaxyservers.yml
++ b/group_vars/galaxyservers.yml
@ -234,6 +234,15 @@telegraf_plugins_extra:
      - data_format = "influx"
      - interval = "15s"
   
# TIaaS setup
tiaas_dir: /opt/tiaas
tiaas_user: tiaas
tiaas_group: tiaas
tiaas_version: master
tiaas_admin_user: admin
tiaas_admin_pass: changeme
tiaas_listen_url: "127.0.0.1:6000"

# TUS
galaxy_tusd_port: 1080
tusd_instances:

  3. In the galaxyservers group variables file, we also need to set the database permissions correctly for TIaaS. It needs to be able to access some Galaxy tables, and we will carefully define only the ones we really need:

    -- a/group_vars/galaxyservers.yml
++ b/group_vars/galaxyservers.yml
@ -8,6 +8,7 @@pip_package: python3-pip                               # geerlingguy.pip
postgresql_objects_users:
  - name: galaxy
  - name: telegraf
  - name: tiaas
postgresql_objects_databases:
  - name: galaxy
    owner: galaxy
@ -16,6 +17,27 @@postgresql_objects_privileges:
    roles: telegraf
    privs: SELECT
    objs: ALL_IN_SCHEMA
  - database: galaxy
    roles: tiaas
    objs: galaxy_user,galaxy_session,job,history,workflow,workflow_invocation
    type: table
    privs: SELECT
  - database: galaxy
    roles: tiaas
    objs: user_group_association,galaxy_group,role,group_role_association
    type: table
    privs: SELECT,INSERT
  - database: galaxy
    roles: tiaas
    objs: group_role_association
    type: table
    privs: DELETE
  - database: galaxy
    roles: tiaas
    objs: role_id_seq,galaxy_group_id_seq,group_role_association_id_seq,user_group_association_id_seq
    type: sequence
    privs: USAGE,SELECT

# PostgreSQL Backups
postgresql_backup_dir: /data/backups
postgresql_backup_local_dir: "{{ '~postgres' | expanduser }}/backups"

    The DELETE privilege is limited in scope to one table: group_role_association. This allows TIaaS to disassociate training groups from roles in the Galaxy database after the training event date has passed, so that users who participated in a training return to using normal (non-training) resources after the training ends.

    The usegalaxy_eu.tiaas2 role will create a cron job to perform this process every night at midnight. You can control when this runs (or disable it) using the tiaas_disassociate_training_roles variable.

  4. We need to add the usegalaxy_eu.tiaas2 role to the end of the playbook (galaxy.yml)

    -- a/galaxy.yml
++ b/galaxy.yml
@ -35,3 +35,4 @@
    - galaxyproject.cvmfs
    - galaxyproject.gxadmin
    - dj-wasabi.telegraf
    - usegalaxy_eu.tiaas2

  5. Lastly we should add the routes for TIaaS to the NGINX template for Galaxy:

    -- a/templates/nginx/galaxy.j2
++ b/templates/nginx/galaxy.j2
@ -90,4 +90,19 @@server {
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }
   
    location /tiaas {
        uwsgi_pass {{ tiaas_listen_url }};
        uwsgi_param UWSGI_SCHEME $scheme;
        include uwsgi_params;
    }

    location /tiaas/static {
        alias /opt/tiaas/static;
    }

    location /join-training {
        uwsgi_pass {{ tiaas_listen_url }};
        uwsgi_param UWSGI_SCHEME $scheme;
        include uwsgi_params;
    }
}

  6. Run the playbook

    Input: Bash
    ansible-playbook galaxy.yml

FAQs | Gitter Chat | Help Forum

TIaaS should be available now! The following routes on your server are now configured (we will run through these in the next section)

URL Use Who
https://<server>/tiaas/new/ Request a new TIaaS training Instructors
https://<server>/tiaas/admin/ Approve and Manage requests Admin
https://<server>/tiaas/stats/ Overall TIaaS statistics (EU Stats) Admins, Funding Agencies
https://<server>/tiaas/calendar/ Calendar of trainings (EU Calendar) Admins, Funding Agencies
https://<server>/join-training/<training-id> Join an TIaaS training Participants
https://<server>/join-training/<training-id>/status Dashboard with job states of trainees. Instructors

Let’s see it in action!

Hands-on: Using TIaaS
  1. Create a new TIaaS request
    • Go to https://<server>/tiaas/new/
    • Here you will find the request form users will fill in to request TIaaS: TIaaS request form.
    • For “Training Identifier”, fill in gryffindor (or remember this value if you enter something different)
      • This is the <training-id> used in the URLs listed above used for:
        1. Workshop participants to join the tiaas group
        2. Workshop instructors to monitor the progress of their participants.
    • Fill in the rest of the form as you like
    • Submit the form and you should see a confirmation dialog: TIaaS requested successfully.
  2. Approve TIaaS request
    • Next, the request will have to be approved by an admin
    • Go to https://<server>/tiaas/admin
    • Log in using the values you configured tiaas_admin_user and tiaas_admin_pass in your group variables file
      • Default values were admin:changeme
    • You should now see the admin panel: TIaaS admin console.
    • Click on Trainings, you should see the TIaaS request listed here: TIaaS request list.
    • Approve the request
      • Click on the training
      • Scroll down to the bottom
      • Change “Processed” to Approved and Save Approve TIaaS.
    • At this point, you would likely email the person who made the request to inform them of approval
  3. Join TIaaS Training
    • Make sure you are logged in to Galaxy
    • On the day of the workshop, participants will visit a following URL to join the TIaaS group
      • https://<server>/join-training/gryffindor
      • A confirmation dialog should appear if all went well: Join TIaaS.
  4. Monitor TIaaS status
    • This is very useful for instructors to monitor the job state of their participants
    • Go to https://<server>/join-training/gryffindor/status
    • In the Dasboard you should see that one user (you) has joined the training \
    • Run some jobs to see the dashboard in action TIaaS dashboard.
    • Scroll down to get some more information on a per-user level (anonymized)
      • Every user designated by their own identifier and colour, but no personal information TIaaS dashboard.

FAQs | Gitter Chat | Help Forum

Comment: Note: GDPR assistance

Since this setup tracks additional personal information (submitter name & email, users in the queue view), TIaaS includes some always-on features to assist with your GDPR compliance.

  • Users in public status dashboard are only visible by an anonymized identifier and colour
  • Email addressses in the TIaaS admin panel will be automatically expunged 60 days after a training event

Of course you need to review any GDPR compliance concerns with your group’s legal representative(s), this only attempts to ensure some protections exist for the users of the system.

Job Configuration

While observability for teachers or trainers is already a huge benefit, one of the primary benefits of TIaaS from UseGalaxy.eu is that your jobs get sent to dedicated compute resources, which won’t be used by anyone else, during the period of the training. We will send all of the training jobs to pulsar if you have completed that tutorial, or one of the slurm destinations from the job configuration training.

In order to achieve this, we first need some way to sort the jobs of the training users into these private queues, while letting the other jobs continue on. So let’s create a sorting hat to figure out where jobs belong.

Hands-on: Writing a dynamic job destination

  1. Create and open templates/galaxy/dynamic_job_rules/hogwarts.py

    -- /dev/null
++ b/templates/galaxy/dynamic_job_rules/hogwarts.py
@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
from galaxy.jobs import JobDestination
from galaxy.jobs.mapper import JobMappingException
import os

def sorting_hat(app, user):
    # Check that the user is not anonymous
    if not user:
        return app.job_config.get_destination('slurm')

    # Collect the user's roles
    user_roles = [role.name for role in user.all_roles() if not role.deleted]

    # If any of these are prefixed with 'training-'
    if any([role.startswith('training-') for role in user_roles]):
        # Then they are a training user, we will send their jobs to pulsar,
        # Or give them extra resources
        return app.job_config.get_destination('slurm-2c') # or pulsar, if available

    return app.job_config.get_destination('slurm')

    This destination will check that the user_email is in a training group (role starting with training-).

  2. As usual, we need to instruct Galaxy of where to find this file. Edit your group variables file and add the following:

    -- a/group_vars/galaxyservers.yml
++ b/group_vars/galaxyservers.yml
@ -137,6 +137,7 @@galaxy_local_tools:
galaxy_dynamic_job_rules:
- my_rules.py
- map_resources.py
- hogwarts.py
   
# systemd
galaxy_manage_systemd: true

  3. We next need to configure this plugin in our job configuration (templates/galaxy/config/job_conf.yml.j2):

    -- a/templates/galaxy/config/job_conf.yml.j2
++ b/templates/galaxy/config/job_conf.yml.j2
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@runners:
    manager: _default_
   
execution:
  default: slurm
  default: sorting_hat
  environments:
    local_dest:
      runner: local_runner
@ -73,6 +73,10 @@execution:
    dynamic_cores_time:
      runner: dynamic
      function: dynamic_cores_time
    # Next year this will be replaced with the TPV.
    sorting_hat:
      runner: dynamic
      function: sorting_hat
   
resources:
  default: default

    This is a Python function dynamic destination. Galaxy will load all python files in the {{ galaxy_dynamic_rule_dir }}, and all functions defined in those will be available to be used in the job_conf.yml.j2. Additionally it will send all jobs through the sorting hat, but we want upload jobs to stay local. They should always run locally.

  4. Run the playbook

    Input: Bash
    ansible-playbook galaxy.yml

  5. Ensure your user is joined to a training

  6. Run a job and observe the logs to see where it goes (journalctl -u galaxy -f)

FAQs | Gitter Chat | Help Forum

Congratulations! you have now set up TIaaS on your Galaxy server.

Comment: Got lost along the way?

If you missed any steps, you can compare against the reference files, or see what changed since the previous tutorial.

If you’re using git to track your progress, remember to add your changes and commit with a good commit message!

Key points

  • TIaaS is an additional service you can deploy which can help you provide a better service to your users

Frequently Asked Questions

Have questions about this tutorial? Check out the tutorial FAQ page or the FAQ page for the Galaxy Server administration topic to see if your question is listed there. If not, please ask your question on the GTN Gitter Channel or the Galaxy Help Forum

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Citing this Tutorial

  1. Helena Rasche, Saskia Hiltemann, 2022 Training Infrastructure as a Service (TIaaS) (Galaxy Training Materials). https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/topics/admin/tutorials/tiaas/tutorial.html Online; accessed Fri Apr 04 2025
  2. Batut et al., 2018 Community-Driven Data Analysis Training for Biology Cell Systems 10.1016/j.cels.2018.05.012

Congratulations on successfully completing this tutorial!