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Instances console

Overview

Instances are the building blocks for running applications and services in the cloud. They provide a flexible and scalable way to deploy workloads, with the ability to easily manage and scale resources as needed.

Select Compute > Instances to view the instances console. The console lists all instances in your project and lets you create and manage instances.

The Instances console shows a list of all instances in a project.

You can start, stop, and reboot instances using the controls at the top of the console.

Under the More Actions menu, you can take the following actions:

  • Soft reboot to attempt to shut down the instance's operating system before initiating the restart.
  • Delete

Select an instance to view the instance details, including:

  • Network information
  • Flavor information
  • Image information
  • Security group information
  • Instance architecture diagram

Use the tabs along the top of the instance detail to navigate to other resources associated with the instance such as volumes, instance snapshots, interfaces, floating IP addresses, security groups, action logs, and console logs.

Select Console to launch an instance console. The console enables you to authenticate into the instance and control the virtual machine from the console terminal.

From the More menu, you can take the following actions on the instance:

Under Instance Status, you can:

  • Stop the instance
  • Lock instances to prevent changes (any project user can lock or unlock instances in a project)
  • Reboot the instance
  • Soft reboot the instance
  • Suspend to write to disk and freeze its current state.
  • Pause to temporarily suspend the execution of the instance.
  • Shelve to offload the instance from a hypervisor resources while preserving the instance's state and data

Under Related Resources, you can:

  • Attach / detach an interface to connect and disconnect virtual network interfaces to and from the instance
  • Attach / detach a volume to connect and disconnect block storage volumes to and from the instance
  • Associate floating IP addresses to assign an externally accessible IP address to the instance
  • Manage the security group for the instance

Under Backups and Snapshots, you can:

  • Create a snapshot to capture the current state of the instance, including its data, configuration, and disk contents.

Under Configuration Update, you can:

  • Resize your virtual hardware
  • Reset root or Administrator password for the instance (at the operating system)
  • Rebuild an instance; this action selects a new operating system for your instance

Select Edit to edit the name of the instance.

Select Delete to delete the instance.

You can add and modify instance tags.

Instances details

Here's a table summarizing the properties and attributes that you should understand in order to create or manage instances in the Compute service.

Property/Attribute Description
Name A human-readable name for the instance, used for identification purposes.
ID A unique identifier automatically assigned to the instance by OpenStack.
Status Indicates the current state of the instance (e.g., active, shutoff, building, error).
Flavor Specifies the size of the instance, including CPU, RAM, and disk resources.
Image The ID or name of the image used to create the instance.
Key Pair The name of the SSH key pair associated with the instance for secure access.
Security Groups A list of security groups applied to the instance for network access control.
Tenant ID The ID of the project or tenant that owns the instance.
User ID The ID of the user who created the instance.
Created At The timestamp indicating when the instance was created.
Updated At The timestamp indicating when the instance was last updated.
Networks A list of networks and associated IP addresses assigned to the instance.
Metadata A set of key-value pairs associated with the instance for custom information.
Availability Zone The availability zone in which the instance is located.
Host The name of the physical host machine where the instance is running.
Power State The power state of the instance (e.g., running, paused, shutdown).
Volumes Attached A list of block storage volumes attached to the instance.
Floating IP The floating IP address associated with the instance for external access.

Understanding these properties and attributes is helpful for effectively creating and managing instances, as they provide crucial information about the configuration, state, and resources of the instances.

Instances service

Instances service CLI reference

Instances service API reference

See also