How to Create and Connect to Your First Compute Instance

Overview

This page shows how to create and connect to your first Scaleway compute instance. A compute instance is a computing unit, either virtual or physical that provides resources to run your applications on.

After you’ve launched your compute instance, you can connect to it as root and use it as you wish.

There are six steps to deploy a new compute instance:

Once the instance is deployed connect and log into it

Requirements

Creating an Instance

Before starting, enter the Compute then Instances section of the management console.

Click the Create Instance button to launch the instance creation wizard.

Choosing an Image

Start by choosing an image for the compute instance:

You can choose an image from five sources:

  • OS Images: Choose your favourite basic Linux distribution, ready to be configured by you.

  • GPU OS: Choose an Ubuntu Image with Nvidia CUDA-drivers pre-installed for GPU applications.

  • InstantApps: We provide an up-to-date list different pre-installed applications.

  • My images: You can populate your own list of instance templates. See also Create your own image

  • Snapshots: You can recover an instance from a previously saved state. See also Backup your data with snapshots

Choosing a Region

You can choose the region in which your instance will be deployed geographically:

Currently we provide the following locations:

  • PAR1: Paris, France
  • AMS1: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Choosing the Instance Type

Choose the type of the instance that you want to deploy:

You can choose from the following instance types:

  • Development Instances: Reliable instances for websites, apps and development environments.
  • BareMetal: These servers are designed for the cloud and for horizontal scaling. You can add additional SSD volumes to get as much as 1TB of SSD storage per server. Our BareMetal Cloud Instances are real dedicated servers and each physical server is allocated to a single customer and one only.
  • General Purpose Instances: Production-grade cloud instances designed for scalable infrastructures. Typically, those instances would host applications that need more resources to be run.
  • GPU Instances: Designed to train complex models at high speed to improve the predictions and decisions of your algorithms. The dedicated NVIDIA Tesla P100 makes GPU Instances particularly suitable for neural network and deep learning applications.
  • ARM: ARMv7 and ARMv8 SSD Cloud Instances built for developers.

Configuring multiple Volumes

Several volumes can be configured to an instance, depending on its technical specifications. In addition, they can be snapshotted, mounted or unmounted.

Note: Volumes can be either Local Storage or Block Storage. Each instance comes with a predefined amount of local storage, depending on the offer. You can split this local storage into several volumes, if required. The total amount of local storage allocated to the instance must correspond to the characteristics of the instance type. On Virtual Instances additional block storage volumes can be added to increase the total storage capacity. Learn more about Block Storage Volumes.

Configuring advanced options

You can configure advanced options of your instance, including:

Naming and tagging the instance

Edit the following information about the instance:

  • The instances name
  • The tag you want to assign to it (Optional). Tags let you organize your instance, you can assign any tag to each instance.

Starting the Instance

Click the Create a new instance button. This action launches the create instance action. The instance will be ready soon after.

Logging into the Instance

When your instance is running, the instances’s IP address is from the Instance Information tab, displaying in the management console:

Important: Your SSH public keys are fetched during the boot process.

If you add them after your instance is booted, they will not be added to your authorized_keys file.

If you do not want the keys to be downloaded during the next boot, execute the following command on your instance:

root@scw-fervent-torvalds:~# echo manual > /etc/init/ssh-keys.override

Logging into the Instance from OSX and Linux

1 . On a Mac or Linux computer, open a terminal program by clicking on the corresponding icon:

2 . Type the following command in the shell:

$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/your_private_key root@your_instance_ip

3 . Allow connection to the host by typing yes followed by pressing Enter:

The authenticity of host 'myhost.ext (212.47.226.35)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 4f:ba:65:cf:14:64:a7:1e:b6:07:7c:00:71:95:21:fa.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

4 . Well done, you are now logged into your instance!

Logging into the Instance from Windows

On Windows, you will need a small application named PuTTy, an SSH client.

1 . Download PuttY here.

2 . Once you have downloaded PuTTY, just start the program by double-clicking on its icon:

3 . The main screen of the application displays:

  • Fill the Hostname field with your instance’s IP address

4 . In the left-side menu, under Connection, expand the SSH sub-category:

  • Select the Auth sub-category and click the Browse button
  • Select the private key file you generated previously
  • Click the Open button to connect to the instance

5 . Upon the first connection, PuttY asks you to allow the connection to the host. Confirm by clicking on OK:

6 . The terminal window displays. Enter the user name root and press Enter to authenticate against the server with your SSH key:

You are now logged into your instance from Windows.

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