To use OpenStack to manage your VMs, follow the following steps:

1. Open the following link in a web browser, login with your account credentials

​http://cloud.stacc.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/

2. Click on Access & Security on the left side panel, then click on Create Keypair to create a new keypair, which you will need to access your VM in the future. Provide a keypair name (<your_key_pair>), and click on Create Keypair button. A new keypair will be created, the private key file will be downloaded to your local file system, move it to a secure place, and change its access mode to 600. e.g.

chmod 600 your_key_pair.pem

3. Click on Images & Snapshots on the left side panel to view a list of existing OS images

4. Click on the Launch button of your chosen image, e.g. stacc_ubuntu12.04, then provide the following information for your new VM.

Note: check your project quotas before your create new VMs.

• Server Name: a name to identify this VM

• Flavor: always choose m1.tiny if it can accommodate your needs.

• Keypair: choose the keypair you created above. (<your_key_pair>)

• Instance Count: 1

• Security Group: make sure default is ticked unless you want to use a different one.

Click on Launch Instance to create the virtual machine instance

5. In the Instances & Volumes panel, review the state of your newly crated instance, once it becomes active and has a public ip assigned, e.g. 138.251.198.xxx, your VM is ready for you to use.

6. You can now access your VM using a ssh console, e.g. ssh -i your_key_pair.pem root@…

7. Please remember to terminate your VM when you do not need it so that other people ca use our cloud resources as you do. To terminate a VM, in the Instances & Volumes panel, select the instances, and click on Terminate Instances.