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This is the Quickstart to start your own running virtual machine in the de.NBI cloud. To start this guide you should have an individual account and be a member of an existing project. If you do not have an account, please visit this page and follow the instructions.

Throughout this guide, we will achive following goals:

  1. First Login
  2. Openstack Dashboard Overview
  3. SSH Setup
  4. Creating a Router and a Network
  5. Launching our Instance
  6. Getting Access to our Instance

First Login

This guide is based on the de.NBI cloud setup in Giessen. It should also be applicable to other de.NBI cloud sites. Please check the correct URL of your site in the Compute Center Specific section.

First of all, visit de.NBI cloud Giessen login page. You should see the following login page:

de.NBI cloud Giessen login

Please choose in the Authenticate using field, the ELIXIR AAI tag and click on the Connect button. You should be redirected to the Openstack Dashboard. If you have any problems or need help logging in, please do not hesitate to contact the Cloud Support of your site. You can find the corresponding support site in the Compute Center Specific section.

OpenStack Dashboard Overview

If the login was successful, you should see the overview page of the OpenStack dashboard:


cloud dashboard


At the top left you should see your current project in the de.NBI Domain (green box). If you have more than one project, you can switch into another one here (click on the arrow down button).

At the top right you can see your username (pink box). When you click on that arrow, you will get a dropdown menu. Here, you can get to your user specific settings (changing dashboard settings and appearance and your password), get to the official user documentation by OpenStack, change your theme or log out.

On the left is the control menu (blue box) to navigate you through your project. The current page is highlighted in blue (In our case Project -> Compute -> Overview). This information can also be found in the yellow box. This could help you navigate to the right page, in the case you have trouble to find the current page we are operating on.

The overview page summarizes the resource allocation within the current project (center of the page):

SSH Setup

Next, we have to setup SSH to login to our instances after they are launched. Go to nav compute and click on Key Pairs (green box). You should see this page:


access_security


If you do not have an SSH key or you are not sure whether you have one, please generate one by following the instructions based on your operating system (Windows/Linux) in the next Generate SSH-Keys section. You can import your SSH Key by clicking on Import Key Pair (right button in the yellow box)(e.g.: .pub in Linux or .key in Windows). Afterwards, your key should be listed on the key overview page. In chapter Getting Access to the Instance we will use this key.

Generate SSH-Keys

You have two options to generate your SSH Key:
1. Manually. Follow the instructions for either Linux or Windows.
2. Automatically. Please see our information on the profile page.

Note that on your "User information" page only RSA and ECDSA public keys are accepted as valid. The following instructions are for RSA keys.

Linux

On all UNIX based operating systems ‘keygen’ may be used to create a key pair. A Linux command example is given below:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -f new_id

which will produce the files new_id and new_id.pub.

Windows

Download, install and start PuTTYgen. Make sure RSA is chosen at the bottom of the window as 'type of key to generate'. You need to move your mouse cursor inside the grey field to create enough entropy until the key is generated. You now may enter a 'Key passphrase' (also enter the same passphrase in the Confirm passphrase field), which acts as a further security mechanism regarding the use of your key. Save your private and public key into separate files e.g, new_private_key.ppk and new_public_key.key with the buttons at the bottom. The .key file can be opened and read with a standard text-editor if you wish to.
The content of the public key file should look like this:

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "rsa-key-20191114"
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEA0DX7jcuqlsCXw51r4RYGkKeu78P9RXqx9VmQ
1bwQl+is2BxZJWZCYibY1x5FfAkKZio+KSG3TRdWMq0JLciWcUTpKfQPduAkUXYX
7pCAnDEzZt4wkabiQvf1odWbf0SWsg8hq46mgYvVMa9Yq1smHF+44WPjaTvHzOxt
tYYIJnQd73vdO/XULbrEnYahp2DSfJL+GDHoymOxYj+3YTQOAxmTGnje1ZjCvwZ2
33KZv+TXJRu6jx4eOMb9RjCvG+e2Bfn/JoaCPI6h4T1KLM5G2uh2tLXqIVN73PfR
ljWpr6NDdPsCd+5uURFnQ2zdjg6G62/5JU5WPZAZZgfKhrE7qw==
---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
When setting your key on the User Information page, you need to add 'ssh-rsa' infront and can add a comment after your key, so it would look like this:
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEA0DX7jcuqlsCXw51r4RYGkKeu78P9RXqx9VmQ
1bwQl+is2BxZJWZCYibY1x5FfAkKZio+KSG3TRdWMq0JLciWcUTpKfQPduAkUXYX
7pCAnDEzZt4wkabiQvf1odWbf0SWsg8hq46mgYvVMa9Yq1smHF+44WPjaTvHzOxt
tYYIJnQd73vdO/XULbrEnYahp2DSfJL+GDHoymOxYj+3YTQOAxmTGnje1ZjCvwZ2
33KZv+TXJRu6jx4eOMb9RjCvG+e2Bfn/JoaCPI6h4T1KLM5G2uh2tLXqIVN73PfR
ljWpr6NDdPsCd+5uURFnQ2zdjg6G62/5JU5WPZAZZgfKhrE7qw== an-individual-comment-you-can-add-to-identify/seperate-keys
Alternatively you can copy the public key in the textbox above the key-fingerprint, after generating and saving the keys in puTTYgen. The public key string in this textbox has the correct 'ssh-rsa' prefix and the creation date as comment (but do not forget to save your private key!).

An alternative for Windows 10 is to use the ssh-keygen command in Powershell (open the Start menu or press the "Win" button on your keyboard, type in 'powershell' and press enter or click on it to run it):

PS C:\Users\myusername> ssh-keygen.exe -t rsa -f new_id
which will produce the files new_id and new_id.pub in the directory C:\Users\myusername.

Similarly, to create an ECDSA key, you can do the following, since it is recommended to use a key length of 521:

Linux

ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -b 521 -f keyname

Your generated public key will then look something like this:

ecdsa-sha2-nistp521 AAAAE2VjZHNhLXNoYTItbmlzdHA1MjEAAAAIbmlzdHA1MjEAAACFBAH3liBXX2P2H20VGrtuR9lnEoA9h7LvhbUfWaKVT9MWTiu9h7zSPcvAZTjGletDBdbhWpEp3LnjnuwcOeteHj9TsgCiuZSjvuGw8sT7DE6xReUq8jTG34n2hKmemOU9DHPJJFDdipDTAqkhxFAkBv+QGqoV9pSPHAN/m8LOnh9cQts29w== username@host

Windows

As mentioned above, on Windows you can use PowerShell to achieve the same result.

Creating a Router and a Network

This section does not apply to the de.NBI cloud site Tübingen. If your project is scheduled to Tübingen please follow the cloud site specific instructions for the de.NBI cloud site Tübingen.

We want to create a network to get access to our in the near future launched instances. First, we get to the Network Topology page: nav network topology. When you click on Graph (red box), you should see this page:


network topology


Here you can see the external network (blue elipse).

What do we need to access our instances:

  • Router
  • Network
  • Subnet

Router

Click on the Create Router button (green box). A form should appear:


Creating router


Fill in the Router Name and select the external for the External Network. Click on the blue button Create Router. Your network topology should looks like this:


Router with external network


Network and Subnet

Now, we need a network. Click on Create Network (yellow box). A three-part form should appear (Network, Subnet, Subnet Details):


network first step


In the first part fill in the Network Name and then click on the blue Next button.


network second step


Here, you have to specify your Subnet Name and your Network Adress (e.g. 192.168.0.0/24). After this, click on the blue Next button again. On the third page you can specify additional attributes for the subnet. For more information hover over the questionmarks. In this guide we skip this step and click on the blue Create button.

Now your topology should include your network:


network final


We want to connect our Router with our new Network. Click on your Router. A tooltip should pop up. Click on Add Interface. A form will appear:


adding interfaces


Select your Subnet and click on the blue Submit button. Your topology graph should look like this:


final network


For further reading visit our Networking section

Launching an Instance

Finally, we can launch our instances. We are still on network overview page.

Please note that it is absolutely essential having completed the SSH Setup before continuing. Otherwise, you will not be able to access your instance.

Click on the Launch Instance button (pink box on the picture in the last chapter). A new Launch Instance form will appear:


launch first


OpenStack fills some information with defaults. Thus, we have to fill the fields on the pages marked with a blue star (blue box).

On the first page we have to specify an Instance Name. After this, click on the Next button or on Source* **. The blue star next to **Details should disappear:


launch source


  1. Select Image as Boot Source (red box).
  2. Select No for Create New Volume (yellow box)
  3. Select an image as source to create the instance (e.g. Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial 2018/01/09 (green box))

After this, click on the Next Button or **Flavor* **.


launch third


A flavor defines a virtual machine setup by defining parameters like hard disk size, available memory or CPU core number. Click on the + Button next to de.NBI.default flavor (red box). Now the star next to Flavor should disappear. You can click on the blue Launch Instance button to launch your instance. Your Network Topology Graph should look like this:


network with instance


Getting Access to the Instance

On the Project -> Compute -> Overview page, we can see that we have allocated some resources:


dashboard


On Project -> Compute -> Instances we can see our instance and that it is running:


instance overview


Floating IP

In order to connect to your virtual machine (= instance), it must be related to a public network ad