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README.md

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+# Cloud Computing Project Submission
+Group Number 2
+
+Members:
+- Emin Arslan  1581975, fd0003933
+- Yash Sharma  1573145, fd0003398
+- Sagarkumar Dipakbhai Rokad 1566440, fd0003372
+- Abhimanyu Rajesh Kanase 1569090, fd0003385
+
+
+## First Task
+
+First we understood the architecture of the faafo application and commands.
+Then we changed the repository link in the install script for faafo to point
+to Emin's [custom git repository](https://git.emin.software/haxala1r/cloud-computing-msc-ai-examples). This was necessary because the demo
+deployment scripts pull from the remote repository when installing faafo
+on an instance and local changes are ignored.
+
+After that, we added a few custom commands to the faafo command line tool.
+First we added a delete-all command, which deletes all fractals. Second,
+we added a delete-selected command, which takes a list of fractal UUIDs and
+deletes all of them. By adding these custom commands we achived a greater
+understanding of the faafo command line tool so that we can add more commands
+as needed in the future. We also added help messages for the new commands
+to provide a better user experience.
+
+List of changed files for task 1:
+- faafo/contrib/install.sh             (changed repository link)
+- demo2-instance-with-init-script.py   (changed repository link)
+- demo3-microservice.py                (changed repository link)
+- demo4-1-scale-out.py                 (changed repository link)
+- demo4-2-scale-out-add-worker.py      (changed repository link)
+- faafo/bin/faafo                      (added commands)
+
+
+## Second Task
+
+The faafo application as given stores all image data, including the image file
+itself in an SQL database. For the second task we changed the faafo API and
+worker programs (faafo/faafo/api/service.py and faafo/faafo/worker/service.py) to store the image file in OpenStack object storage. Other
+data about the image will still be stored in the database.
+
+We changed the API server such that it will no longer store the image as a blob
+in the database. Instead, only a URL to the object containing the image data
+is stored, and the API retreives this data when the image is requested.
+
+Upon first running the API, a new container with the name "fractals" will
+be created under our account. This container will hold all generated fractal
+image files.
+
+OpenStack authentication is currently performed by a pre-generated application
+credential. In the first attempts we used password authentication directly. 
+In a real deployment, it would be best to instead have the deployment
+script automatically generate a new set of application credentials for the API
+and workers to use.
+
+OpenStack authentication using libcloud was a difficult roadblock. For a long
+while we were stuck on this issue, as the example given in the documentation
+did not work for us. We were eventually able to fix this by forcing v3
+authentication directly and using the base URL instead of the one given
+by OpenStack. Here is the code example that worked for us:
+
+```
+from libcloud.storage.types import Provider
+from libcloud.storage.providers import get_driver
+import libcloud.security
+libcloud.security.VERIFY_SSL_CERT = False
+
+cls = get_driver(Provider.OPENSTACK_SWIFT)
+# Use these parameters for v3 authentication
+driver = cls(
+    'CloudComp2', # username
+    'demo', # password
+    ex_force_auth_url='https://10.32.4.29:5000/', # NOT https://10.32.4.29:5000/v3
+    ex_force_auth_version='3.x_password', # '3.x_appcred' for application credentials
+    ex_tenant_name='CloudComp2',
+    ex_domain_name='default'
+)
+
+print(driver.list_containers())
+```
+
+This code sample uses username and password directly for authentication.
+Our submitted faafo application instead uses application credentials to
+authenticate. In this case we had to change ex_force_auth_version to
+'3.x_appcred'.
+
+We tried deploying using the demo2, demo3, demo4-1 and demo4-2 deployment scripts. 
+All of these deployments were successful and made use of OpenStack object storage 
+correctly, showing that the application in its current state is scalable.
+
+List of changed files for task 2:
+- faafo/faafo/api/service.py
+- faafo/faafo/worker/service.py
+
+
+A more detailed breakdown of what exact changes were made to which file can
+be found in [our git repository history](https://git.emin.software/haxala1r/cloud-computing-msc-ai-examples).