Nubo is a command line program that allows you to start virtual machines on different cloud providers, also making sure you can SSH into those instances once they are available.

As an example, you might want to start a new node on Amazon EC2:

$ export NUBO_CLOUD=EC2_EU_WEST $ nubo start ami-27013f53 Instance i-4ea89004 available on EC2_EU_WEST. Public IP: 54.247.8.150

And then install puppet on it:

$ ssh root@54.247.8.150 "apt-get -y install puppet" Warning: Permanently added '54.247.8.150' (RSA) to the list of known hosts. Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... The following extra packages will be installed: [...]

One of the biggest challenges when deploying virtual machines on multiple clouds is ensuring you can actually access those machines after they have started up. For example, different cloud providers allow you to upload your SSH public key in different ways. Certain providers automatically configure firewall rules which by default deny traffic to your instances. If your deployments need to be automated, your infrastructure code has to deal with that.

nubo abstracts away these differences for you. It uses Apache Libcloud to start virtual machines on different cloud providers and Paramiko to establish SSH connections to the instances you start. Its functionalities are also available as a Python library.

Installation¶ Install nubo with one of the following commands: $ pip install nubo Alternatively, use easy_install : $ easy_install nubo You need to have ca-certificates installed on your system.

Usage¶ Invoke nubo without arguments to see the available functionalities: $ nubo usage: nubo [-h] {config,clouds,list,images,start,reboot,delete} ... Start Virtual Machines on multiple clouds positional arguments: {config,clouds,list,images,start,reboot,delete} config set your cloud credentials clouds list available clouds list list running VMs images list available images start start a new VM reboot reboot a given VM delete delete a given VM optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit Run nubo config to set your cloud credentials. The following examples shows how we can configure one of the available cloud providers: $ nubo config 1 DIGITAL_OCEAN 2 EC2_AP_NORTHEAST 3 EC2_AP_SOUTHEAST 4 EC2_AP_SOUTHEAST2 5 EC2_EU_WEST 6 EC2_US_EAST 7 EC2_US_WEST 8 EC2_US_WEST_OREGON 9 OPENNEBULA 10 RACKSPACE 11 RACKSPACE_UK Please choose the cloud provider you want to setup [1-11] 5 Please provide your API key: MYAPIKEY Please provide your API secret: MYAPISECRET EC2_EU_WEST cloud configured properly To see which virtual machine images are available, we can use nubo images : $ export NUBO_CLOUD=DIGITAL_OCEAN $ nubo images 20 images available on DIGITAL_OCEAN id name =============================== 85271 wheezy 85431 postgres-base 1607 Gentoo x64 13632 Open Suse 12.1 x32 13863 Open Suse 12.2 X64 18414 Arch Linux 2012-09 x64 23593 Arch Linux 2012-09 x64 63749 Gentoo 2013-1 x64 1601 CentOS 5.8 x64 1602 CentOS 5.8 x32 1609 Ubuntu 11.10 x32 Server 1611 CentOS 6.2 x64 1615 Fedora 16 x64 Server 1618 Fedora 16 x64 Desktop 2676 Ubuntu 12.04 x64 Server 12573 Debian 6.0 x64 12574 CentOS 6.3 x64 12575 Debian 6.0 x32 12578 CentOS 6.3 x32 14097 Ubuntu 10.04 x64 Server New virtual machine instances can be started with nubo start . Note that the command will not return until the remote machine has finished booting up and it accepts SSH connections: $ nubo start 12573 Instance 150843 available on DIGITAL_OCEAN. Public IP: 198.199.72.211 With nubo list we can see the status of our virtual machines on a given cloud provider: $ nubo list 1 VMs running on DIGITAL_OCEAN id name state ip ======================================== 150843 test RUNNING 198.199.72.211