Slalom Data Science Virtual Machine

Created in July 2020 by raphael.vannson@slalom.com.

Abstract

This repository provides instructions to:

• Provision a data science VM from an existing slalomds box (you are a VM user ).
• Create a new box from scratch (you are a box developer).

Instructions:

1. Everyone must complete the steps in the Pre-requisites section
2. Follow an additional set of instructions for VM users or box developers, links are provided in the section Next steps / further instructions.

On Windows, use Git Bash to execute the commands, use any terminal on Mac OS X.

Pre-requisites

System requirements

Check that your system meets the following requirements -- All of these requirements are absolutely necessary.

• Mac OS X 10.14 or Windows 10
• 16GB RAM
• 6 physical CPU cores (12 logical cores)
• 60GB disk

Install brew (Mac OS X only)

Check that Brew is installed, if not install it, see: https://brew.sh.

brew -v
#Homebrew 2.1.14
#Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision d9eef8; last commit 2019-10-16)

Install git

Mac OS X:

brew install git
git --version
#git version 2.20.1 (Apple Git-117)

Windows:

Installl git from https://gitforwindows.org. This will also provide a Unix-like terminal called Git-Bash.

Install Virtual Box

1. Download the VB installer from one of these direct links (or the downloads page: (home page: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download):
   • Mac OS X: https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.12/VirtualBox-6.1.12-139181-OSX.dmg,
   • Windows: https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.12/VirtualBox-6.1.12-139181-Win.exe
2. Double-click on the installer file to install VirtualBox
3. [Mac OS X only] When prompted, go to system preferences and allow the Oracle installer to proceed. Go back to the installer window, if the installation failed, run it again (step 2), it will succeed this time.

Create the vagrant directory

Mac OS X:

mkdir /Users/Shared/vagrant
mkdir /Users/Shared/vagrant/boxes
mkdir /Users/Shared/vagrant/synchronized

Windows:

1. Open Git-bash as administrator (Right-click on the icon -> "Run as administrator").
2. Execute these commands:

cd /c
mkdir vagrant

3. Close Git-bash.
4. Open a new Git-bash terminal (do not run as administrator this time).
5. Run these commands:

mkdir /c/vagrant/boxes
mkdir /c/vagrant/synchronized

Install vagrant

1. Download and run the installer from https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.
2. Install the Vagrant plugins with these commands:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
vagrant plugin install vagrant-disksize

Add VM hostname DNS entry

No worries if you are not able to edit /etc/hosts, you will just have to replace slalomdsvm to 192.168.33.10 in the URLs you use to access the VM services via your web browser. Example to access Jupyter use http://192.168.33.10:8888/ instead of http://slalomdsvm:8888/.

To edit the hosts file on Mac OS X:

sudo echo "192.168.33.10 slalomdsvm" >> /etc/hosts

To edit the hosts file on Windows:

1. Open Notepad (run as administrator).

2. Open this file: c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (select "All files" to list all the files, not just .txt files).

3. Add this line at the bottom:

   192.168.33.10	slalomdsvm
   

4. Save and exit.

Clone this repo

cd
mkdir repositories
cd repositories
git clone https://github.com/raphslalom/ds-vm

Next steps / further instructions

Follow an additional set instructions provided:

• In the ./slalomdsvm directory if you are a VM user (ex: taking a training).
• In the ./slalomdsbox directory if you are a box developer (ex: creating a new box).