Portal:Cloud VPS
 | Please read the Wikimedia Cloud Services introduction first. |
This page contains information about Cloud VPS and links to developer documentation.
Cloud VPS Documentation
About Cloud VPS
Cloud VPS (Virtual Private Server) provides a cloud computing infrastructure powered by OpenStack for projects related to the Wikimedia movement. The environment includes access to a variety of data services. Cloud VPS is meant to make it easier for developers and system administrators to try out improvements to Wikimedia infrastructure (including MediaWiki), power research and analytics, and host projects that are not viable in the Toolforge environment.
At the moment Debian is the only available operating system since it's a reliable and stable GNU/Linux distribution.
Virtual machines running on Cloud VPS are subject to the instance lifecycle.
Cloud VPS is for the advanced users to get involved in Wikimedia operations and software development. Cloud VPS contains many projects, each of which uses one or more instances.
How is Cloud VPS organized?
Cloud VPS is divided into projects. Each project has separate members and administrators who can create and maintain virtual machines ("instances") for use by that project. Each project can have its own access policies, DNS records, etc.
Who gets a Cloud VPS project?
A VPS project can be granted for any Wikimedia-adjacent work that cannot be accomplished using other WMCS offerings. Cloud VPS instances go through a request and approval processes, and large resource requests (e.g. dozens of gigabytes of ram or hundreds of gigabytes of disk space) will receive extra scrutiny. Before requesting, explore whether Toolforge or another service will adequately meet your needs.
Because Cloud VPS projects are typically resource-intensive and pose some long-term security risks, all projects must have one or more active maintainers. Maintainers must have an active phabricater account, must subscribe to the cloud-announce mailing list, and must respond to queries and requests for action on the part of WMCS staff and admins. Instances are not permanent and are reviewed periodically for potential deletion/removal.
What is a Cloud VPS project?
A project is a unit of privilege separation inside the Cloud VPS environment. Each project has separate management of membership, virtual machines, HTTPS proxies, firewall rules, etc. Examples of projects include Toolforge and the Beta Cluster.
How does Cloud VPS work?
Cloud VPS is a virtualization cluster and hosts various virtual machines (called instances) using OpenStack Compute. This is slightly different from your normal servers that you ssh to (i.e. Toolserver), as virtual machines do not exist physically, but reside inside a much bigger machine called the host machine. More details about the physical setup of Cloud VPS can be found under Portal:Cloud VPS/Infrastructure.
Cloud VPS developer documentation
See Cloud VPS help for more technical documentation related to Cloud VPS.
Terms and conditions
You must review and agree to our terms and conditions.
Account Holders who plan to use WMCS resources and products must read and agree to the following:
- Wikimedia Cloud Services Terms of Use
- Code of Conduct for technical spaces
- Cloud VPS projects must not collect, store, or share private data or personally identifiable information, such as user names, passwords, or IP addresses, except when complying with the conditions listed in the Wikimedia Cloud Services Terms of Use.
Request a Cloud VPS Project
To request a Cloud VPS Project, you will need to create a new project request on Phabricator, the Wikimedia community's technical project management tool. A Wikimedia developer account is required. Please read our guidelines for project requests before requesting a project.
Join an existing project
- Choose a project to join with OpenStack browser.
- Request membership by creating a Phabricator task and assigning it directly to the project administrator(s).
- You can find the list of project admins by going to https://openstack-browser.toolforge.org/project/<project-name>.
Create a new project
- Follow the instructions on the "Cloud-VPS (Project-requests)" phabricator task.
Add members or viewers to a project
Project members can add new members and viewers via https://horizon.wikimedia.org/project/member/.
Access an instance
See Help:Accessing Cloud VPS instances.
Learn about project instances
To learn more about project instances, read the project instances documentation.
Log your actions
It is best practice to log changes to all instances of your project.
Wikimedia Cloud Services provides a Server Admin Log for users to log their project server administration actions on.
You can add a log entry in the #wikimedia-cloud connect channel on Libera Chat by sending a message like: !log <projectname> <message>
Communication and support
Support and administration of the WMCS resources is provided by the Wikimedia Foundation Cloud Services team and Wikimedia movement volunteers. Please reach out with questions and join the conversation:
- Chat in real time in the IRC channel #wikimedia-cloud connect, the bridged Telegram group, or the bridged Mattermost channel
- Discuss via email after you have subscribed to the cloud@ mailing list
- Subscribe to the cloud-announce@ mailing list (all messages are also mirrored to the cloud@ list)
- Read the News wiki page
Use a subproject of the #Cloud-Services Phabricator project to track confirmed bug reports and feature requests about the Cloud Services infrastructure itself
Read the Cloud Services Blog (for the broader Wikimedia movement, see the Wikimedia Technical Blog)