Developers and platform engineers
Virtual Machines (Compute): How to Launch and SSH Into Your First Linux VM
Create a Linux virtual machine, attach network and security resources, and verify SSH access.
10 min read · Updated 2026-04-01
Prerequisites
- • Project with compute quota and network access
- • Existing SSH public key or permission to create a key pair
- • Image and flavor available in the catalog
Implementation workflow
This runbook focuses on a reliable sequence for provisioning and validating the service through the cloud console.
- Open Compute > Instances and select Create Instance.
- Set instance name, image, flavor, key pair, private network, and security group.
- Launch and wait for the instance status to reach ACTIVE.
- Allocate and associate a floating IP from the external network.
- Connect over SSH and complete baseline package updates.
Validation and operator checks
After deployment, verify connectivity, security boundaries, and backup posture before promoting workloads to production.
Operator tips
- • Use least-privilege security group rules and restrict SSH source IPs.
- • Tag instances with environment and owner metadata for operations visibility.
- • Capture a snapshot after baseline hardening to speed up new deployments.