What is the goal of the Workshops-on-Demand (WoD) ? Make it easy to register for and run jupyter notebooks you can host yourself thanks to this infrastructure.

The WoD infrastructure comprises 3 differents systems to work, that are usually spread across 3 machines:

• a wod-backend machine, hosting the Jupyter Hub and the WoD templates to generate the real workshop that a given student will run, witth eir metadata. This machine may also intercat with appliances for WoD neededd one, such as Docker e.g. You may have multiple wod-backend in case of a large setup. Corresponding software on the repos wod-backend, wod-notebooks templates, wod-private optional setup
• a wod-api-db machine hosting the WoD API service and a PostgreSQL database to store live information about the running platform. Corresponding software on the repo wod-api-db
• a wod-fronted machine, hosting the Web interface to see the list of available workshops and book one. Corresponding software on the repo wod-frontend

It is built on shoulders of giants

The WoD architecture uses REST and MAIL API to allow communication between its nodes

Before a note book is made available to the user requesting it, there are a certain number of communications happening between machines

Here are a series of blogs published on the HPE Developer Community Portal describing the genesis and the architecture of the project. It also covers the deloyment phase of the different components as well as the creation of content.

• 0/ From Jupyter Notebooks-as-a-Service to HPE DEV Workshops-on-Demand
• 1/ Open sourcing Workshops-on-Demand part 1: Why and How
• 2/ Open Sourcing Workshops-on-Demand part 2: How to Deploy the backend
• 3/ Open Sourcing Workshops-on-Demand part 3: Understand the Backend
• 4/ Open Sourcing Workshops-on-Demand part 4: Manage the Backend
• 5/ Open Sourcing Workshops-on-Demand part 5: How to Deploy the frontend and API servers (To be Published)
• 6/ Open Sourcing Workshops-on-Demand part 6: Create new workshops (To be Published)

You can also refer to the various presentations made on this project:

• LCA 2021
• OSXP 2021
• JDLL 2024
• AlpOSS 2024

In order to install a full infrastructure, a set of reliminary steps are required:

• Install a VM/Physical machine with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS minimal and default setup. (20.04 or 22.04 should still work, while less tested these days).
• On each VM the user ubuntu is being created and can be used for the initial setup. For access to the machine and account refer to the Ubuntu documentation or how a VM template was set up. Ensure that this user as root access (either via sudo or with password access)
• Then you have to ensure minimal dependencies are present to run the installation. We only need git. All other dependencies are installed by the installer. So issue on each machine: sudo apt install git
• Once installed you can use it to clone the installer (part of the backend project) again on each machine: git clone https://github.com/Workshops-on-Demand/wod-backend
• Then you use the installer to install your WoD infrastructure: cd wod-backend/install ; ./install.sh -h
• Reading the example for the full infrastructure at the end of the help message should give you the required guidance to set it up.

At the time of this writing, this reads:

Full installation example of a stack with:
- 2 backend servers be1 and be2 using port 8010
- 1 api-db server apidb on port 10000
- 1 frontend server front on port 8000
- all declared on the .local network
- internal postfix server running on port 9000
- e-mail sender being wodmailer@local
- ansible groupname being test
- management user being wodmgr
 
On the be1 machine:
  ./install.sh -a apidb.local:10000 -f front.local:8000 \
  -g test -u wodmgr -p 9000 -s wodmailer@local\
  -b be1.local:8010 -n 1 -t backend \
On the be2 machine:
  ./install.sh -a apidb.local:10000 -f front.local:8000 \
  -g test -u wodmgr -p 9000 -s wodmailer@local\
  -b be2.local:8010 -n 2 -t backend \
On the apidb machine:
  ./install.sh -a apidb.local:10000 -f front.local:8000 \
  -g test -u wodmgr -p 9000 -s wodmailer@local\
  -b be1.local:8010,be2.local:8010 -t api-db \
On the frontend machine:
  ./install.sh -a apidb.local:10000 -f front.local:8000 \
  -g test -u wodmgr -p 9000 -s wodmailer@local\
  -t frontend \

Note that the installer should support Rocky/Alma or Debian fairly easily instead of Ubuntu, but tests have not been fully performed. Contributions welcome.