3 Launching Instances from the SUSE OpenStack Cloud Dashboard #
Instances are virtual machines that run inside the cloud. To start an instance, a virtual machine image must exist that contains the following information: which operating system to use, a user name and password with which to log in to the instance, file storage, etc. The cloud contains a pool of such images that have been uploaded to OpenStack Image and are accessible to members of different projects.
3.1 Key Parameters #
When starting an instance, specify the following key parameters:
- Flavor
In OpenStack, flavors define the compute, memory, and storage capacity of
novacomputing instances. To put it simply, a flavor is an available hardware configuration for a server. It defines the “size” of a virtual server that can be launched.For more details and a list of default flavors available, see Book “OpenStack Administrator Guide”, Chapter 14 “OpenStack command-line clients”, Section 14.11 “Manage flavors” and Book “OpenStack Administrator Guide”, Chapter 4 “Dashboard”, Section 4.6 “Manage flavors”.
- Key Pair (optional, but recommended)
Key Pairs are SSH credentials that are injected into images when they are launched. For this to work, the image must contain the
cloud-initpackage.It is recommended to create at least one key pair per project. If you already have generated a key pair with an external tool, you can import it into OpenStack. The key pair can be used for multiple instances belonging to that project.
For details, see Book “OpenStack Administrator Guide”, Chapter 14 “OpenStack command-line clients”, Section 14.6 “Manage project security”.
- Security Group
In SUSE OpenStack Cloud Crowbar, security groups are used to define which incoming network traffic should be forwarded to instances. Security groups hold a set of firewall policies (security group rules).
For details, see Book “OpenStack Administrator Guide”, Chapter 14 “OpenStack command-line clients”, Section 14.6 “Manage project security”.
- Network
Instances can belong to one or multiple networks. By default, each instance is given a fixed IP address, belonging to the internal network.
- Boot Source of the Instance
You can launch instances from the following sources. For details, see Book “OpenStack Administrator Guide”, Chapter 14 “OpenStack command-line clients”.
Images that have been uploaded to SUSE OpenStack Cloud Crowbar.
Volumes that contain images.
Instance snapshots.
Volume snapshots.
3.2 Launching Instances from Images, Snaphots, or Volumes #
For instructions on how to launch instances from images or snapshots, see Launch an Instance.