boincme

What is boincme?

boincme allows you to easily and cheapily run BOINC on the AWS cloud. BOINC is an application that allows you to donate CPU time to various scientific projects. boincme deploys the infrastructure and provides a VM image to automatically deploy and run BOINC on cheap AWS Spot Instances.

Where is boincme?

boincme is still under development.

So far we have a Packer template that builds a BOINC AMI that can configure itself from SSM Parameter Store.

Soon there will also be CloudFormation templates to create the infrastructure and Spot fleet to automatically deploy this AMI.

Usage

You will need a BOINC account manager like BAM.

1. Build the packer template:

   packer build "packer"

2. Configure the following SSM Parameter store paramaters.

   Name	Use	Default
   boinc/manager_username	Your username on your account manager.	-
   boinc/manager_password	Your password for your account manager. Make sure you set this as a SecureString in SSM.	-
   boinc/manager_url	URL of your account manager.	"https://bam.boincstats.com/"

3. Start an instance from your generated AMI. Ensure it has internet access and has a role attached that allows it to read the SSM parameters you configured earlier. For a quickstart you can use the "AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore" policy provided by AWS.