# Launch instances

Instances are virtual machines that run inside the cloud.

Before you can launch an instance, gather the following parameters:

- The instance source can be an image, snapshot, or block storage volume that contains an image or snapshot.

- A name for your instance.

- The flavor for your instance, which defines the compute, memory, and storage capacity of nova computing instances. A flavor is an available hardware configuration for a server. It defines the size of a virtual server that can be launched.

- Any user data files. A user data file is a special key in the metadata service that holds a file that cloud-aware applications in the guest instance can access. For example, one application that uses user data is the cloud-init system, which is an open-source package from Ubuntu that is available on various Linux distributions and that handles early initialization of a cloud instance.

- Access and security credentials, which include one or both of the following credentials:

  - A key pair for your instance, which are SSH credentials that are injected into images when they are launched. For the key pair to be successfully injected, the image must contain the `cloud-init` package. Create at least one key pair for each project. If you already have generated a key pair with an external tool, you can import it into OpenStack. You can use the key pair for multiple instances that belong to that project.

  - A security group that defines which incoming network traffic is forwarded to instances. Security groups hold a set of firewall policies, known as security group rules.

- If needed, you can assign a floating (public) IP address to a running instance to make it accessible from outside the cloud. See Manage IP addresses.

- You can also attach a block storage device, or volume, for persistent storage.

Note

Instances that use the default security group cannot, by default, be accessed from any IP address outside of the cloud. If you want those IP addresses to access the instances, you must modify the rules for the default security group.

After you gather the parameters that you need to launch an instance, you can launch it from an image or a volume. You can launch an instance directly from one of the available OpenStack images or from an image that you have copied to a persistent volume. The OpenStack Image service provides a pool of images that are accessible to members of different projects.

## Gather parameters to launch an instance

Before you begin, source the OpenStack RC file.

1. Create a flavor.

   Creating a flavor is typically only available to administrators of a cloud because this has implications for scheduling efficiently in the cloud.

       $  openstack flavor create --ram 512 --disk 1 --vcpus 1 m1.tiny

2. List the available flavors.

       $ openstack flavor list

   Note the ID of the flavor that you want to use for your instance:

       +-----+-----------+-------+------+-----------+-------+-----------+
       | ID  | Name      |   RAM | Disk | Ephemeral | VCPUs | Is_Public |
       +-----+-----------+-------+------+-----------+-------+-----------+
       | 1   | m1.tiny   |   512 |    1 |         0 |     1 | True      |
       | 2   | m1.small  |  2048 |   20 |         0 |     1 | True      |
       | 3   | m1.medium |  4096 |   40 |         0 |     2 | True      |
       | 4   | m1.large  |  8192 |   80 |         0 |     4 | True      |
       | 5   | m1.xlarge | 16384 |  160 |         0 |     8 | True      |
       +-----+-----------+-------+------+-----------+-------+-----------+

3. List the available images.

       $ openstack image list

   Note the ID of the image from which you want to boot your instance:

       +--------------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
       | ID                                   | Name                            | Status |
       +--------------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
       | 397e713c-b95b-4186-ad46-6126863ea0a9 | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec         | active |
       | df430cc2-3406-4061-b635-a51c16e488ac | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec-kernel  | active |
       | 3cf852bd-2332-48f4-9ae4-7d926d50945e | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec-ramdisk | active |
       +--------------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+

   You can also filter the image list by using grep to find a specific image, as follows:

       $ openstack image list | grep 'kernel'

       | df430cc2-3406-4061-b635-a51c16e488ac | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec-kernel  | active |

4. List the available security groups.

       $ openstack security group list

   Note

   If you are an admin user, this command will list groups for all tenants.

   Note the ID of the security group that you want to use for your instance:

       +--------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+----------------------------------+
       | ID                                   | Name    | Description            | Project                          |
       +--------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+----------------------------------+
       | b0d78827-0981-45ef-8561-93aee39bbd9f | default | Default security group | 5669caad86a04256994cdf755df4d3c1 |
       | ec02e79e-83e1-48a5-86ad-14ab9a8c375f | default | Default security group | 1eaaf6ede7a24e78859591444abf314a |
       +--------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+----------------------------------+

   If you have not created any security groups, you can assign the instance to only the default security group.

   You can view rules for a specified security group:

       $ openstack security group rule list default

5. List the available key pairs, and note the key pair name that you use for SSH access.

       $ openstack keypair list

## Launch an instance

You can launch an instance from various sources.

- Launch an instance from an image
- Launch an instance from a volume
  - Boot instance from image and attach non-bootable volume
  - Boot instance from volume
  - Attach swap or ephemeral disk to an instance
- Launch an instance using ISO image
  - Boot an instance from an ISO image
  - Make the instances booted from ISO image functional
- Boot an instance using PXE
  - Create an image with iPXE
  - Use the iPXE image as a rescue image

this page last updated: 2026-06-08 08:40:45

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