The first thing you are likely to want to do when you first log into your OpenStack dashboard is spin up a virtual machine (known as an instance in OpenStack terminology) and log into it. This is a simple procedure but does require a little familiarity with the layout and tools available in the dashboard.
Instances are created from the Instances tab which can be found at Project -> Compute -> Instances
Once there click on the Launch Instance button to open the instance creation dialogue. The first tab of the instance creation dialogue is the Details tab:
The numbered configuration options are as follows:
- Availability Zone - This is a way to segregate hosts depending on preset criteria. However, this option is not available in the Memset dashboard so it should be left as the default, which is; nova.
- Instance Name - A configurable name for the new virtual machine.
- Flavour - This is where the specs of the instance (RAM, disk space, CPU's) are selected from a pre-populated list.
- Instance Count - The number of virtual servers that will be started.
- Instance Boot Source - This is where the location of the bootable filesystem is selected. The options are; volume, image and snapshot.
- Image/volume/snapshot - This field will populate with a list of the available volumes, snapshots or images depending on what Instance Boot Source is selected.
The next tab in the dialogue is Access and Security:
The two available options here are:
- Key Pair - The SSH key that will be loaded onto the server.
- Security Groups - One or more security groups can be applied to the server.
The next tab is the Networking tab.
Here the network(s) that the instance will be connected to are selected. They can be dragged and dropped from the lower list into the Selected Networks box.
The remaining two boxes, Post Creation and Advanced are not required in order to start an instance.
Once all the required parameters have been filled you will be able to create and start the instance.
Last updated 13 June 2016, 10:02 GMT