How to Create and Connect to Your First Instance
Overview
This page shows how to create and connect to your first Scaleway cloud compute instance. A cloud instance is a computing unit, either virtual or physical that provides resources to run your applications on.
After you’ve launched your cloud instance, you can connect to it as root and use it as you wish.
There are six steps to provision a new instance:
- Choose an image
- Choose a region
- Choose an instance type
- (Optional) Adding additional storage
- Configure advanced option
- Name and tag the instance
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@c1-X-Y-Z-T:~# echo manual > /etc/init/ssh-keys.override
Requirements
- You have an account and are logged into console.scaleway.com
- You have configured your SSH Key
Creating an Instance
Before starting, click the “Create Instance” button in the control panel.
Choosing an Image
Start by choosing an image for the cloud instance.
You can choose an image from four sources:
OSes: Choose your favourite basic Linux distribution, ready to be configured by you.
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 a 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 develpment 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.
- ARM: ARMv7 and ARMv8 SSD Cloud Instances built for developers.
Adding additional storage
A simple solution to increase the storage for your instances is to add extra volumes.
Several volumes can be attached to an instance. In addition, they can be snapshotted, mounted or unmounted.
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 visible in the instance list on the control panel.
On OSX and Linux
On a Mac or Linux computer, open a terminal program and type the following command in the shell:
john@localhost:~$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/your_private_key root@your_instance_ip
Allow connection to the host:
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)?Well done, you are now logged into your instance!
On Windows
On Windows, you will need a small application named PuTTy, an SSH client. Download putty here.
Once you have downloaded PuTTY, just start the program.
- Fill the “Hostname” field with your instance’s IP address
- 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
- Return in the Session category and click the “Open” button
You are now logged into your instance from Windows.
Mounting Additional Volumes
Formatting Additional Volumes
If the new volume has never been formatted, it has to be formatted using mkfs before you can mount it.
For instance, the following command creates an ext4 file system on the volume:
root@c1-X-Y-Z-T:~# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nbd1
mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
610800 inodes, 2441406 blocks
122070 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=2503999488
75 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8144 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: doneMounting Additional Volumes Manually
To mount the device manually as /mnt/data, run the following commands:
root@c1-X-Y-Z-T:~# mkdir -p /mnt/data
root@c1-X-Y-Z-T:~# mount /dev/nbd1 /mnt/data
root@c1-X-Y-Z-T:~# ls -la /mnt/data/
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 1 00:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 1 00:07 ..
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Jan 1 00:07 lost+foundMounting Additional Volumes Automatically with systemd
To mount the additional volume automatically, create a systemd script that will mount the volumes automatically during the boot of your cloud instance.
If not yet done, create the directory into you want to mount your volume: mkdir -p /mnt/data
As the volume is empty by default, you have to create a filesystem before you can use it. To format it with with an ext4 filesystem, use the following command: mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nbd1
To get the UUID of your volume, run the command blkid and take a note of the ID as you will need it in the next step.
Create or edit the file that corresponds to the path of your directory nano /etc/systemd/system/mnt-data.mount and edit is as following: The file name of the script must correspond to the path where you mount the volume (/mnt/data ⇒ mnt-data.mount)
[Unit]
Description=Mount NDB Volume at boot
[Mount]
What=UUID="16575a81-bb2c-46f3-9ad8-3bbe20157f7c"
Where=/mnt/data
Type=ext4
Options=defaults
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.targetReplace UUID with the ID of your volume.
Now reload systemd: systemctl daemon-reload Launch the script to mount the volume: systemctl start mnt-data.mount Finally enable the script to mount your volume automatically during boot: systemctl enable mnt-data.mount
Your volume will automatically be mounted after a reboot. You can run the df -h command, this command will list all your devices and where they are mounted:
root@scw-65acb0:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 1009M 0 1009M 0% /dev
tmpfs 203M 12M 191M 6% /run
/dev/nbd0 46G 454M 43G 2% /
tmpfs 1011M 0 1011M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 1011M 0 1011M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/nbd1 46G 52M 44G 1% /mnt/data