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Launch and Access Your Instance

Creating a Virtual Machine

Create and launch a VM OpenStack Command
See what flavors (sizes) are available openstack flavor list
See what Images are available
The Jetstream team makes *** Featured- **
images available from which to build.		 openstack image list
Create and boot an instance
Notes:

  • Make sure your SSH keyname matches
  • your-instance-name is the name of the
    instance; make it something meaningful for you.
  • Choose an appropriate flavor from the list in the
    first command
  • Choose an appropriate image from the list in the
    second command
 openstack server create <my-server-name> \
--flavor FLAVOR \
--image IMAGE-NAME \
--key-name <my-keypair-name> \
--security-group <my-security-group-name> \
--wait
Optional-Volume-backed

Add the following optional flag to the above
server create step if you wish to not use the
default ephemeral disk and instead
create a custom volume-backed instance
(storage counts against your quota)

  • size in GB
  • Note your volumes_attached id from the server create output
--boot-from-volume <size>

Optional Rename volume:

openstack volume set --name '<my-server-name>-vol' <volumes_attached_id>
Optional-Network

If you have multiple networks, you’ll need
to also include this line in the
server create step

See Create a network in the CLI for more
information
--nic net-id=<my-network-name>
Create a public IP address for an instance openstack floating ip create public
Add that public IP address with that instance openstack server add floating ip my-server-name your.ip.number.here

Logging into your Virtual Machine

Once your instance is up and has a floating IP, you are ready to ssh in and use it. If your ssh key is one of the default names (e.g. id_rsa or id_ed25519) and is in your ~/.ssh dir, you won’t need to specify the location of the key. Otherwise, you’ll need to use the ssh option -i path/key. For example:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/my-custom-key-name user@ip.number

Each distribution has a different default user. We will show examples for each without the -i path to your ssh key, assuming you have ~/.ssh/id_rsa or ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 as your default key:

For Ubuntu 22 or 24:

ssh ubuntu@your.ip.number.here

For Rocky 9:

ssh rocky@your.ip.number.here

You should be able to access and use your VM now! Please see Instance Management Actions in the CLI for all instance management actions.

September 4, 2025 August 11, 2025