How to migrate your nodes to PLE

To become a new PlanetLab Europe member. Please send an e-mail to PlanetLab Europe support.

Step 1: Be sure your institution is a member of PlanetLab.

Your migration from PlanetLab Central (PLC) to PlanetLab Europe (PLE) is covered by your membership agreement in PlanetLab, based on an understanding worked out between the two parties. Eventually, we will transition PLC memberships to PLE, but we are starting by putting federation into place on a technical level.

Step 2: Creation of a new site and PI, Tech users on PLE

In order to be aware of the migration of your site from PLC to PLE please send an e-mail to PlanetLab Central support to inform them of your migration. When we will receive the confirmation of Princeton, we will automaticaly generate a site and the PI and Tech account with your former information that you had on PLC. The only information that we will have to modify is the login_base. The login_base field for your site should be different from the one in PLC, we will use your current login_base at PLC and suffix it with 'ple', e.g., from 'uc3m' to 'uc3mple', from 'ucl' to 'uclple', etc. We'll do the mediation with Princeton, so your current slices do not get suspended due to your taking down your nodes from PLC.

Step 3: We'll give you the green light.

When your site is created in PLE, we will send you a message with your PlanetLab Europe information. Then, it will able you to launch your site and nodes on PLE.

Step 4: Add nodes to your site.

Once your site is registered, the PI and the Tech will have access to their accounts.
Then it is possible for them to register a node by clicking on "add nodes" after logging in. For more information please follow the Technical Contact's Guide.

Please take advantage of the OneLab distribution's all-in-one boot image feature, which will allow you to boot from a single ISO or USB boot image (no floppy needed).

To avoid any inconsistencies with the PlanetLab Central database, please give a different hostname to your nodes than the ones that were on PLC, or delete your nodes on PLC before adding them on PLE.

If you choose to delete all your nodes from PLC, please send a mail to the users mailing list to inform PLC of your migration.

When your nodes on PLE are in the boot state (up and running), please contact the, PLE support team and we will enable you to create slices.

Step 5: Migrate your users and slices

The two moves - migrating nodes on the one hand, and migrating users and slices on the other hand - are totally orthogonal. Please alert your users to the migration.

The users who do not have any activity on PLC should be removed at PLC, and invited to register again at PLE with the same email address.

As a rule, running experiments should not be migrated, as it would imply redeploying the experiment on a brand new slice (name changes, content gets trashed, etc.). Just wait for them to terminate if they are short-term. If you have long-term experiments, then please get in touch with us so we can discuss options.

During the transition period, please pay attention to limit your total number of slices on PLC and PLE combined to the ten allowed. With accounts on the two systems, no built-in limit prevents you from creating up to twenty slices, which would not reflect well on the project.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question or remark.