Getting started with OpenStack

Here are some initial steps to get started with our OpenStack platform. This plan is ideal for clustering, where all of your instances have internal IPs and can communicate internally and securely.

SSH Keys

Linux servers

You will need an SSH key and add it to the account. If you already have one, you can skip ahead.

In order to create an SSH key, you can use the following command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"

This will generate an SSH keypair: a public and private key. **KEEP YOUR PRIVATE KEY SAFE - THIS IS YOUR PASSWORD**

Windows Servers

You can boot up a Windows instance and set up an initial password from the console. Afterwards, you can use RDP to access the server. Next, you will need to generate an SSH key.


Generating an SSH Key on a Windows PC

  1. Download and install PuttyGEN
  2. For Type of key to generate, select SSH-2 RSA and then click Generate
  3. Move your mouse in the area designated until the progress bar fills
  4. Click Save Private Key to save your private key file. **KEEP YOUR PRIVATE KEY SAFE - THIS IS YOUR PASSWORD**
  5. Copy the text in the Public Key field. You will be pasting this in your CACloud OpenStack dashboard in the next section.

Adding your Private Key to your OpenStack project


  1. In the CACloud OpenStack Public Cloud dashboard, go to the SSH Keys section on the left panel and click Register Key
  2. Name your key and paste your public key in the Public Key textbox. Your key should start with ssh-rsa and have a lot of letters and numbers afterwards; the last part should be your email, or whatever comment you set at the end of your key.
  3. This key will now be injected into any Linux instance you build.

Setting up a New Server


  1. Click Add New Server on the left panel to boot up an instance
  2. Provide it a name and select your SSH key, OS template and flavour, set up some initial Security group (firewall) rules and select how many identical instances you'd like to set up.
  3. Click Create new Virtual Machine

Once booted, it comes with an internal IP by default. This is great for clusters, but you will need an external IP to access it initially via SSH/RDP.

Adding a Public IP

  1. Click on your server's hostname and go to the Network tab
  2. Click Assign Floating IP address
  3. Select the interface (by default it will add the initial interface) and click Assign Floating IP Address.
  4. You can access your server via SSH/RDP using the newly assigned floating IP.

You now have a public IP address to access your server. This IP address will be connected to your account. This means that if you remove your servers and add any new ones, you can always use the same IP address, even if you completely rebuild/change your OS.

Additional Storage

  1. Click Storage then click Create new volume
  2. Enter a name to label your new storage volume and select the size of your storage volume
  3. Once the volume is created, you can then attach it to any of your servers. Your server will automatically see this as a new drive once attached.

Note: The storage volume will persist in your account even if you remove the server.


These are the first steps towards using CACloud's OpenStack. Apart from using our GUI, you can also provision and manage your resources via an open CLI and API.


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