The next few steps will familiarize you with Nebula, our on-site OpenStack implementation.

Retrieve Your Nebula Password

Specify your AD username, then execute the following command to retrieve your Nebula password:

export AD_USERNAME=
sudo ssh ${AD_USERNAME}@public-linux.ncsa.illinois.edu cat /afs/ncsa/projects/openstack/etc/users/${AD_USERNAME}/password

Create an SSH Keypair

Log into Nebula and expand the Compute dropdown.

Select Access & Security, navigate to the Key Pairs tab, and click the Create Key Pair button.

Walk through the wizard to generate an SSH key pair.

Your browser should automatically download a private key (a .pem file).

Create an Instance

At the top, choose your desired project.

Click Launch Instance, choose a flavor (size) for your instance, and select Boot from image.

Make sure to select your desired Image (centos, coreos, ubuntu, etc) from the new dropdown that appears.

For reference, m1.large or m1.medium should be sufficient for a typical development environment.

Networking Gotchas

  • DO NOT FORGET to associate an SSH key for this machine, or else you will never be able to get into it
  • Remember to associate a Floating IP with this VM, so you can access it externally via a 141.142.xxx.xxx IP
  • Be sure to add Permissions to this VM:
    • remote SSH
    • remote HTTP
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