DIT4C has a lot of advantages for running research tools in the cloud. However, it also comes with a central administration cost. Wouldn't it be great to run a DIT4C container (which is just a normal Docker/AppC container that exposes all its functionality via HTTP) standalone in the cloud without needing DIT4C?

This OpenStack Heat template allows you to run a DIT4C container by itself on a OpenStack Nova instance, allowing you to get some of the positives of DIT4C without needing a centrally-administered service. It uses ngrok2-relay & password-reverse-proxy, forked from DIT4C helper images, to expose and protect a DIT4C container instance.

As a starting point, it requires a CoreOS image to be available in OpenStack Glance. If you don't have one already, you can upload one yourself.

The template takes the following inputs:

• Instance Size - how big would you like the instance running the container to be?
• Image ID - the Glance ID of your CoreOS image
• Availability Zone - where should the instance be provisioned?
• ngrok Region - the instance uses ngrok.com to expose itself to the world. Pick a region that's closest to you.
• Container Image - the container image to run. Can be Docker (docker://mydockerhubaccount/mydockerrepo) form, or any other form rkt accepts.
• Container Port - which port does the container expose its HTTP functionality on? For all standard DIT4C containers, this is likely 8080.
• Password - your container is protected by a single fixed password prompt. Choose wisely.
• Notify URL - Reading the instance logs to get the ngrok.com URL for the container can be tiresome. Include a valid URL here and the URL will be POST`ed when it's ready. dweet.io works well for this.
• Key Name - you'll likely want an SSH key for the host, even if you don't plan to use it, in case your VM gets rebooted and/or you want to save your instance via rkt export.

Note that because the instance is exposed via ngrok.com, it doesn't require a public IP address or any open ingress ports.

Obviously, this is a far cry from DIT4C itself, with its support for OAuth & saving of instances to images through the web UI. However, if you don't have the time/resources to run DIT4C, this might be enough for the work you need to get done.