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Virtual machines

These guides walk you through the console, from an empty project to a virtual machine you can reach from the Internet.

Guide You end up with
Create a virtual machine A running Ubuntu VM with a private IP on one of your subnets
Expose a VM with an Elastic IP A public IP that forwards traffic to that VM

What a VM needs

A virtual machine in Superphenix is built from three things you pick in the creation wizard:

  • An availability zone (AZ). The VM, its disks and its network interfaces all live in the AZ you select. You cannot move a VM to another AZ afterwards.
  • A subnet. The wizard requires at least one subnet. The subnet's IPAM hands the VM a private IPv4 and IPv6 address, or you set them by hand.
  • A boot disk. Disks are optional in the wizard, but a VM without an OS disk has nothing to boot. The guide uses an Ubuntu cloud image imported over HTTP.

Before you start

  • Select your organization and project in the top bar. Every resource you create belongs to that pair.
  • Have a VPC and a subnet in the target AZ. Each AZ ships with a default VPC and a default subnet. To get your own range or a NAT gateway, follow Create a subnet with a NAT gateway first.
  • Optional: upload an SSH public key under SSH Keys in the sidenav. The wizard injects it into the VM through cloud-init.

What you get by default

  • A user named spx with passwordless sudo, created by the default cloud-init configuration.
  • A generated password for spx, visible on the instance's Storage tab under Cloud Init. The password expires at first login, so the VM asks you to change it.
  • SSH password authentication enabled, plus any SSH keys you selected.
  • DNS pointed at 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.

You can replace all of this by switching on Customize configuration in the wizard's Storage & SSH step and providing your own cloud-init user data.

For the concepts behind these pages, read Compute and Network.