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Announcing public API for TurnKey Hub

By Alon Swartz4 min read
awsec2cloudhub

More power, control, flexibility and automation of cloud servers.

Alan Kay once said: "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible". We live by those words, and I think we've done a pretty good job up until now.

The Hub makes launching and managing instances on Amazon EC2 really simple, but the one thing that has been missing is a solution to make complex things possible - i.e., programmatic control.

Which brings me to todays announcement of the TurnKey Hub API, and HubTools - Python API bindings and CLI tools.

Some examples to wet your appetite:

Launch a new TurnKey Core appliance in the cloud:

$ hub-launch core

And of course, preseeding is supported, for example:

$ hub-launch lamp --db-pass=foobar

But wait, there's more. Lets say you are developing a new Wordpress website in a local VM which is backed up using TKLBAM, with a backup ID of 2. Restoring the backup to a new cloud server is as simple as:

$ hub-launch 2

So how do you know what backups you have available? Which appliances are available and their preseeding options? The status and related information of your cloud servers?

It's easy:

hub-list-backups
hub-list-appliances
hub-list-servers

If the included CLI tools aren't enough and you need more power, use the Python bindings to develop your own code. It's really simple.

For example, lets say I wanted to launch 10 TKL Core servers:

for i in range(1, 11):
    hub.servers.launch("core", label="TurnKey Core %s" % i)

There is so much you can do with HubTools, it's only limited to your imagination.

The full documentation is available here. If you don't have a free Hub account yet, get one here.

Comments (6)

Not just adding random features

Reply 1
While the new Hub features are coming out incrementally, they really are part of a bigger unifying vision. I don't like to hype up vaporware, but we have a lot of great ideas we're working on and we like to think we're just getting started. There's a big gap between what the Hub does right now and what we envision it doing in the future.

Also note that we're using the Hub internally to help develop and test TurnKey, so we're probably using it more than the typical user and run into its limits sooner. We're scratching our own itch, and the community benefits from that.

Great Job!

Reply 2

Nice work.  I'm sure this will really make TurnKey look even more appealing as an enterprise grade solution.

I'm impressed with the way all the pieces of TurnKey just fit together like a puzzle pieces.  Even as new functionality is added it never seems like something gets patched onto the existing framework.  Instead, it just integrates smoothly with what's already there.

Thanks for all that you're doing.

TurnKey LXC templates are available via the Proxmox UI

Reply 3

Hi Lee,

Assuming that you mean just running a local TurnKey server on Proxmox, then TurnKey LXC templates are available for download via the Proxmox UI.

In the Proxmox web UI, select a valid storage device/location in the left pane (i.e. one that is configured to store LXC templates). Then near the top of the right pane, click the "Template" button and select the desired TurnKey server. It should start downloading. When that's finished, you can launch a new LXC container from the downloaded TurnKey template.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer a "proper" VM, download the relevant ISO. Then create a new VM, select the ISO and install it as you would any other OS.

If I misunderstood and you mean linking a local Proxmox server to the TurnKey Hub, then that is possible too. Unfortunately though the Hub account creation process requires an AWS account. That's because the main value of a Hub account linked to a local server is our built in backup system; TKLBAM. TKLBAM is an encrypted remote backup tool and uses AWS S3 storage to store backups. We do hope to support other storage backends in future but no ETA on when that might be available.

I hope that helps.

Non-Aws platforms

Reply 4

You mentioned OpenStack, ever thought about Proxmox?

Apples to oranges

Reply 5
The Hub is a service that acts as higher-level interface optimized for TurnKey that sits between you and service providers such as Amazon Web Services. In the future other cloud providers besides AWS will be supports. Private clouds will also eventually be supported. We think OpenStack is one of the most interesting offerings and it will probably be one of the first non-AWS platforms the Hub supports.

In comparison, OpenStack is software you run on bare metal to create a private/public cloud. The Hub doesn't do that.