Launch the Default FastStart Image

Your FastStart installation includes a default CentOS 5 image. This section describes how to launch an instance from this image and connect to that instance. The tasks listed in the follow sections require a network connection.

Important

Before you can use the commands that follow, set up your environment variables by sourcing the eucarc file. On the Frontend enter the following command: source /root/creds/eucarc.

To launch the default image included with FastStart:

Find the default image by typing the following command:

 euca-describe-images

This command returns a list of images available. For new FastStart installations, a default image is provided - in this example, the image ID is emi-72613A2E:

IMAGE eki-D313397A admin/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic.manifest.xml 508678674223 available public
      i386 kernel instance-store  
IMAGE emi-72613A2E admin/euca-centos-5.8-2012.05.14-x86_64.manifest.xml 508678674223
      available public i386 machine eki-D313397A eri-F9A83F12 instance-store  
IMAGE eri-F9A83F12 admin/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic.manifest.xml 508678674223 available
      public i386 ramdisk instance-store

Create a key pair using the euca-add-keypair command. This command will store the public half of the key pair and keep it available for your Eucalyptus cloud instances, and will output the private half of the key pair. Save this output to a file for future use, as in the following example:

euca-add-keypair euca-demo > euca-demo.private

Tip

If you've already added a keypair, you can skip this step.

Change permissions on the private keypair file so that only you can access and change it:
```
chmod 0600 euca-demo.private
```
Run the instance with the euca-run-instances command, specifying the appropriate image ID and the name of the key pair you just created. For example:
```
euca-run-instances -k euca-demo emi-72613A2E
```
This will return output similar to the following:
```
RESERVATION     r-CCE33FC0     449455269925     default
INSTANCE     i-68A24092     emi-72613A2E     0.0.0.0     0.0.0.0     pending     euca-demo     0 
m1.small     2012-05-17T10:36:46.232Z     PARTI00     eki-D313397A     eri-F9A83F12
monitoring-disabled     0.0.0.0     0.0.0.0               instance-store 
```
Note that the initial state of the instance is 'pending' while the instance is being created.
After a few moments, check to see if your instance is available for use yet by using the euca-describe-instances command:
```
euca-describe-instances  i-68A24092
```
When the instance is ready, this command will return output similar to the following:
```
RESERVATION     r-CCE33FC0     449455269925     default
INSTANCE     i-68A24092     emi-72613A2E     192.168.9.91     10.93.7.76     running     euca-demo     0
m1.small     2012-05-17T10:36:46.232Z     PARTI00     eki-D313397A     eri-F9A83F12
monitoring-disabled     192.168.9.91     10.93.7.76               instance-store   
```
Note that the instance is now listed as 'running', and there's now an IP address - in this example, 192.168.9.91. You can use this IP address to connect to the instance.

Connect to the running instance using SSH, specifying the private key file and the IP address of the instance. For example:

ssh -i euca-demo.private  192.168.9.91

This command returns output similar to the following:

Warning: Permanently added '192.168.9.91' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Last login: Thu May 17 03:39:58 2012 from eucahost-9-91.eucalyptus
-bash-3.2#

Congratulations! You've now successfully launched and connected to the default FastStart image.

Please see the Eucalyptus User Guide for more tutorials.