The most common task as a Principal Investigator will be to approve the use of PlanetLab Europe resources by users at your site. PIs

To grant access to PlanetLab nodes, create a slice and assign users to that slice. You should create one slice per project or experiment at your site.

Users may be assigned to more than one slice at a time. All users assigned to a slice may add and delete nodes from that slice. Users login to nodes by specifying the slice name as the login name; thus all users of a slice login to the same account on each node. Each user should generate and use their own SSH key to login, however. See the User's Guide for more information about how to login to nodes.

Because all of the users assigned to a slice have virtual root access to all the nodes they assign to the slice, as a PI, you must exert careful oversight over their use of the slice. Granting and revoking privileges to users at your site is your responsibility.

Creating an account

Once your site has filed the appropriate paperwork and has been approved to join PlanetLab, submit a connect request which will establish your site and account in the database. This request must be approved by PlanetLab Operations; wait until you receive an e-mail indicating that your request has been approved, before continuing.

Make sure that you list yourself as the Principal Investigator of your site. If you do not want to appoint a separate Technical Contact to handle the day-to-day maintenance of your nodes, also list yourself as the Technical Contact for your site.

PlanetLab Support will enable your site and account within a day. After you receive an e-mail from PlanetLab Support, you may login and begin to enable user accounts and create slices.

Under certain circumstances, multiple PIs may exist within a single site. Additional PIs should create their own accounts. If a user with an existing account needs to be upgraded to PI status, have him or her contact PlanetLab Support.

Enabling users

You must enable the accounts of the users at your site before they may login. From the Users section on the right hand navigation menu, Click My Users.

On the Accounts page, there is a list of all users registered at your site. Select the user you want to enable.

The Details for Account page opens for the user you selected. Choose Enable to change the user's status.

If a user no longer requires access to PlanetLab Europe or leaves your site disable their account by selecting Disable or Delete from the menu.

Creating slices

You may create and delete slices at any time. To create a slice, visit the Manage Slice page. Slice names must begin with the designated prefix for your site, must contain only alphanumeric low ASCII characters, and must be less than 32 characters in length.

Academic or other educational institutions may create up to 10 slices. Commercial institutions may create up to 2 slices. Your slice limit may be adjusted depending on your site's resource contributions and other factors. If you require more slices than you have been allocated, contact PlanetLab Support.

Be aware that when you delete a slice, all processes and data associated with that slice will be permanently deleted. Before deleting a slice, notify all of the users assigned to the slice and ensure that any data that they would like to keep, are retrieved before the slice is deleted.

Assigning users to slices

After creating a slice, you may assign users to it. Ensure that the users who will use the slice have registered for accounts and that you have enabled their accounts (see above). Visit the Manage Slices page, select the slice to assign users to, and select the set of users that should be granted access to the slice.

Note that deleting a user from a slice does not cause slice data or process state to be affected on any node. Deleting a user simply disables SSH logins to the slice by that user. It may take up to an hour for any changes to be propagated to active nodes.

Assigning nodes to slices

Once you have assigned users to a slice, you or any user of the slice may assign nodes to it by using the Manage Nodes form. If you intend to run a slice on all available nodes, think carefully about you will manage and monitor it before you deploy it, and visit the Manage Nodes form often to add new nodes. To automate this task, consider using the programmatic interface to the slice database instead of the website.

Be aware that when you delete a node from a slice, all processes and data associated with that slice will be permanently deleted from that node. Before removing a node from a slice, notify all of the users assigned to the slice and ensure that any data that they would like to keep, are retrieved before the node is removed from the slice.