Running an Instance

Step 1: Visit the Dashboard

Log in to the Openstack dashboard at http://CONTROL_NODE/dashboard - the username is “demo”. The password can be found in the file keystonerc_demo in the /root/ directory of the control node.

Note: make sure you use the “demo” username here.

Step 2: Enable SSH on your default security group.

Once logged in to the OpenStack dashboard, click the “Project” tab in the left-side navigation menu, and then click “Access & Security” under the heading “Compute.”

Under the “Security Groups” heading, click the “Manage Rules” button for the “default” security group. Click the “Add Rule” button, and in the resulting dialog, enter “22” in the “Port” field, and then click the “Add” button.

Step 3: Create or import a key pair.

In the left-side navigation menu, click “Access & Security” under the heading “Compute.” In the main portion of the screen, click the tab labeled “Key Pairs,” and choose either to “Create Key Pair” or “Import Key Pair.” The “Create Key Pair” dialog will prompt you to supply a keypair name before downloading a private key to your client.

The “Import Key Pair” option will prompt you to provide a name and a public key to use with an existing private key on your client. For name, choose something to identify that key (like your username, for example) and for key, use the contents of your public key file, usually in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub on the machine from which you will be ssh-ing in.

Step 4: Add an image.

In the left-side navigation menu, click “Images” under the heading “Compute.” Click the “Create Image” button, located in the upper-right portion of the screen. In the resulting dialog box, enter “Fedora22” in the “Name” field, “https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/22/Cloud/x86_64/Images/Fedora-Cloud-Base-22-20150521.x86_64.qcow2” in the “Image Location” field, choose “QCOW2” from the “Format” drop-down menu, leave the “Minimum Disk” and “Minimum Ram” fields blank, leave the “Public” box unchecked, and click the “Create Image” button.

For a collection of links to alternative cloud-ready images, check out image resources.

Step 5: Launch the instance.

In the main portion of the screen, under the “Images” heading, click the “Launch Instance” button for the “Fedora22” image. In the resulting dialog, provide a name in the “Instance Name” field and select “m1.small” in the “Flavor” field.

You have to assign a network, under “Networking” tab, either click on the “+” next to “private” or drag & drop the “private” box from “Available networks” to “Selected networks”. Finally, click the “Launch” button.

Step 6: Associate Floating IP

In the main portion of the screen, under the “Instances” heading, click the down arrow button under “Actions” column for your instance you just launched, followed by the “Associate Floating IP”. Click on “+” next to “IP Address” and select the “public” Pool in the “Allocate Floating IP” dialog, continue by clicking “Allocate IP”. Being back in the “Manage Floating IP Associations” dialog you can select the allocated IP Address and click “Associate”.

The associated Floating IPs can be spotted in the “IP Address” for each instance.

For additional details, please read how to set a floating IP range.

Step 7: SSH to Your Instance

Using the key pair file from step 3, ssh into the running vm using its floating ip address:

$ ssh -i my_key_pair.pem fedora@floating_ip_address