Horizon

Horizon is Openstack’s default dashboard where you can manage users and projects, and browse, upload and download files. It is intended as an easy-to-use graphical interface to the data you have stored in the OLRC. Support for uploading files is limited, but we are actively developing improvements.

Due to the limitations of web browser-based applications, Horizon is not suitable for uploading or downloading large amounts of data. You will experience significantly higher performance and reliability if you use the Swift CLI, S3 API, or one of our other recommended tools.

To use Horizon, get started by logging in. There are three pieces of identification you will need:

  • Your domain (usually your institution)
  • Your username
  • Your password

Enter your credentials and click “Sign In”.

Once signed in you should be taken straight to your primary project’s container listing. (What’s a project? What’s a container?)

To navigate between your projects in Horizon, click the drop-down menu with your domain name in the upper left corner.

Add a container

To upload data in Horizon, start by navigating to the container you want to upload your data to, or create a container for your data.

To create a new container, click the “+ Container” button.

Add a container in Horizon.
Add a container in Horizon.

Enter a name for the container, and select if you would like the container to be public, then click “Submit”. You can also set your container as “Protected”, which means that objects in the container will not be able to be deleted or overwritten.

Upload data

Once you’re in the container you want to upload your data to, click “Upload” to upload files or a directory. You can also use the “Large Object” button to upload larger files (recommended for files up to 5GB).

Upload files in Horizon.
Upload files in Horizon.

Public data

Any container can be set as “public” by clicking a container, then clicking the “Public Access” checkbox, or by setting the container as public when it is first created. This will generate a URL that you can share with other users, and they will be able to view all objects within that container.

By default however, the OLRC is IP-restricted. This means that public URLs can only be accessed by someone in a subscriber IP range. One exception to this is your project called “public”, which Scholars Portal has set up for all subscribers.

In the “public” project, a container that has been set as public will have a pre-defined URL that can be shared with anyone and has no IP restrictions. These URLs can also be used in other applications, such as to embed a link to an image or video hosted in the OLRC.

These URLs are generally structured as:

https://static.scholarsportal.info/domain/container/object

So for a domain called “scholarsportal”, a container called “images”, and a file called “test.png”, the URL would be:

https://static.scholarsportal.info/scholarsportal/images/test.png

An experimental feature is available that allows you to limit access to public containers by IP range.

Protected data

Containers can be set as “protected” when they are created, or by clicking the settings icon and checking the box for “Protected”. Data in a protected container cannot be overwritten or deleted.

The settings button in Horizon.
The settings button in Horizon.
The Update Container window in Horizon.
The Update Container window in Horizon.

 

OpenRC file

Within Horizon, you can download an OpenRC file that can be used with the Swift command line. The variables in this file can also be used to setup other tools like rclone. To download this file:

  1. Set your project in the upper left corner that you want to download this file for.
  2. Click your username in the upper right corner, and select “OpenStack RC File”.
  3. Save the downloaded file.

You also have the option to create application credentials with defined access levels that can be used in other applications. To do this, select “Identity”, “Application Credentials” in the left navigation menu. On the new page, click “Create Application Credential” in the upper right of the page.