Deploying OpenStack

Launching Instances

Now that we have a valid user and virtual disk image, we are ready to launch our first Nova instance. But before we start spinning up instances, we need to make a keypair so that we will be able to log in to the new instance via ssh. To create your keypair, use the euca-add-keypair tool:

# euca-add-keypair ken > ken.pem
# chmod 600 ken.pem

Now that we have the key, let’s launch an instance. Launching an instance via the EC2 API requires three arguments: your keypair name (not the filename “ken.pem”, just “ken”), the size (although it will default to “m1.tiny”), and the machine image name (we’ll use our previously uploaded “ami-6683ba18” image):

# euca-run-instances -k ken -t m1.tiny ami-6683ba18
RESERVATION    r-1pkchwbm book default
INSTANCE    i-00000001 ami-6683ba18 scheduling ken (book, None) 0 m1.tiny
2011-07-04T20:28:51Z unknown zone

As you can see from the output from euca-run-instances, our instance has been launched and it is currently in the 'scheduling' state. If we wait a few minutes and everything goes well, it should progress to the 'running' state. We can check on its progress through the EC2 API with the euca-describe-instances command:

# euca-describe-instances
RESERVATION    r-1pkchwbm book default
INSTANCE    i-00000001 ami-6683ba18 10.0.0.2  10.0.0.2  running
ken (book, nova-controller) 0 m1.tiny  2011-07-04T20:28:51Z nova

We can also use the nova utility to make the same query through the OpenStack API. With this tool, you are looking for ...