A quick tour of Rack
rack is a command-line tool for managing your Rackspace account. To get started, download the executable. Once it's installed, run rack configure to set up your credentials. You'll be asked for:
- Your Rackspace username
- API Key (get this in your account settings screen)
- Region (DFW, IAD, ORD, LON, SYD, HKG)
You can find this information in your web dashboard, but once you have them, you can start to manage your account strictly from the command line.
You default credentials are saved at ~/.rack/config
List available images
An image is the OS type you want. You can get a list of the available image like this (I'm just showing Ubuntu becasue there are a lot of images)
$ rack servers image list | grep Ubuntu
973775ab-0653-4ef8-a571-7a2777787735 Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) (PVHVM) ACTIVE 20512
656e65f7-6441-46e8-978d-0d39beaaf559 Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) (PV) ACTIVE 20512
4315b2dc-23fc-4d81-9e73-aa620357e1d8 Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) (PVHVM) ACTIVE 20512
458e08d7-d230-41a7-9aa2-335129d2e49c OnMetal - Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) ACTIVE 20512
fb508530-2500-4a30-a947-038491df2bb5 OnMetal - Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) ACTIVE 20512
eb6f98a3-5f5d-4153-a011-99823e076dd7 OnMetal - Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) ACTIVE 20512
09de0a66-3156-48b4-90a5-1cf25a905207 Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) (PVHVM) ACTIVE 20512
5ed162cc-b4eb-4371-b24a-a0ae73376c73 Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) (PV) ACTIVE 20512
List available flavors
A flavor describes the specs (RAM, disk, etc) that the new image will run on.
$ rack servers flavor list
ID Name RAM Disk Swap VCPUs RxTxFactor
compute1-15 15 GB Compute v1 15360 0 0 8 1250
compute1-30 30 GB Compute v1 30720 0 0 16 2500
compute1-4 3.75 GB Compute v1 3840 0 0 2 312.5
compute1-60 60 GB Compute v1 61440 0 0 32 5000
compute1-8 7.5 GB Compute v1 7680 0 0 4 625
general1-1 1 GB General Purpose v1 1024 20 0 1 200
general1-2 2 GB General Purpose v1 2048 40 0 2 400
general1-4 4 GB General Purpose v1 4096 80 0 4 800
general1-8 8 GB General Purpose v1 8192 160 0 8 1600
...
performance2-120 120 GB Performance 122880 40 0 32 10000
performance2-15 15 GB Performance 15360 40 0 4 1250
performance2-30 30 GB Performance 30720 40 0 8 2500
performance2-60 60 GB Performance 61440 40 0 16 5000
performance2-90 90 GB Performance 92160 40 0 24 7500
Manage keypairs
Like other cloud services, Rackspace uses keypairs to control access to the servers. So, when you set up a server, you need to create or specify the keypairs for the machine's you'll want to have access to a server.
NB: I'm not so sure any of this works the way I think it does!
Create a keypair
$ rack servers keypair generate --name odewahn-macbook-air
Name odewahn-macbook-air
Fingerprint 01:de:f4:ee:73:15:46:9b:53:d4:06:9f:be:94:fb:c4
PublicKey ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDkAlOHDRIxij/A46o1MHEWVe4IPYJ5PRyahSh6gTq8gyVZJDltAVODQoudMjCDUb5FzWVKSwZjUr7WCGJvE0J/ClBxBfXfJ8jH+D5EeEQDbiwqHCAq+5/vtP9rf2bqZd1L8STBbcy+eYGSzMO4TO+RTe0XuIsrspL5wNkvnY82pG/CA9pCLsopUjcWG22iNFj29/bUGdgRToecJUud4WT4rfshiEEEXqTnflLxjPeRzf8mipZ+aIPyIPYU6Rf9/UBWgggrBgE0yOU5JLMqhyG8G/m63XgquJlCoQ9+99HzjyywM55Gi8RNJ53nMXLIaN9pjIbsDCBmVmtyl1UXkml/ Generated-by-Nova
PrivateKey -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Lots of stuff here
Upload your existing keypair
If you have an existing kye on your system (and, if you use practically any service cloud-based service you most likely do!), you can also upload it with rack, like this:
$ rack servers keypair upload --name andrew-macbook-pro --file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Name andrew-macbook-pro
Fingerprint 73:c0:21:55:28:f1:51:06:47:bc:58:fa:6d:91:28:8c
PublicKey ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCyl61Meicp9VNKN6dEQawsCAvg8SHNrdixMDheRs764OM/1JswVLaRuR+XWEZbvE1UHEXv8KEtBgJPZ2h3HBBZpK/QqdP1QjRwQOKAAObUIx6r25tSZ08X1rV3rlZ88jUGwQWY2EeceWY+MQlpmVy0mfT6M0RLDr2oKsyW8kSlOsvfBYt802Td28C2DfmqD+irmHhZbYfDpSOwri4vArWdz0V2Pvq/CrJclG/jq2/POyLoW5hv+HzAnULRfppLYzfv/OazqCZV9vlmfAXjqZDwkSFcd6tnEifije2A64STpadhc7gLcj1ndlVkeC/YZFiHdFNhtxb6F7nYnYyDAgAL apple@new-host-4.home
PrivateKey
Then, when you create a server (coming up in the next section!), you can add your key to the new instance to bootstap it.
List existing keypairs
The folowing command shows the keypairs uploaded to your account:
$ rack servers keypair list
Name Fingerprint
andrew-macbook-pro 73:c0:21:55:28:f1:51:06:47:bc:58:fa:6d:91:28:8c
odewahn-macbook-air 01:de:f4:ee:73:15:46:9b:53:d4:06:9f:be:94:fb:c4
odewahn-macbook-pro 7d:a5:c8:80:f2:dc:61:d3:cd:65:97:ef:66:fb:7f:7a
odewahn-orm-mac 9e:70:4f:55:1b:4f:0e:c9:d6:5f:39:1d:27:86:5c:0d
Create a server
Use rack servers create to create a new server. You'll need to provide the image-id and flavor-id you want (see the earlier section on how to find this information). For example, the following command will create a 1GB RAM / 1 CPU server named swarm-test running Ubuntu 14.04 with my default keypair:
$ rack servers instance create \
--name swarm-test \
--image-id 5ed162cc-b4eb-4371-b24a-a0ae73376c73 \
--flavor-id general1-1 \
--keypair andrew-macbook-pro
ID 18a93442-9da1-4d48-b80d-923543e96a70
AdminPass ************
List your servers
You can get a list of the servers you have (and their status) using the rack servers list command:
$ rack servers instance list
ID Name Status PublicIPv4 PrivateIPv4 Image Flavor
b2772795-a7ed-4f9d-801f-9eb3585b1f87 swarm-test BUILD 10.176.192.65 5ed162cc-b4eb-4371-b24a-a0ae73376c73 general1-1
e3f8a765-8ced-457b-92ea-a16adbfd578d interlock ACTIVE 162.242.242.5 10.208.165.236 5ed162cc-b4eb-4371-b24a-a0ae73376c73 general1-1
95bdf7a8-bedb-4d8e-94d5-0733ab8df5ec jupyter-kernel ACTIVE 104.130.20.99 10.184.8.237 06bb130b-7607-46f9-85ae-124bae4d0f5b onmetal-compute1
0c1e740e-fd06-408e-9d7b-b8f263351123 strata-lb ACTIVE 23.253.156.165 10.208.196.91 e19a734c-c7e6-443a-8
Note that in this log, the swarm-test server is in the BUILD stage. Once it's complete, it's status will change to ACTIVE and you can log in.
Log in to a server
Once the server has been built, you can log into it by finding it's public IP address (the PublicIPv4 field from the list command). If you've uploaded a keypair, you should log right in without a password. If not, you'll be prompted for the AdminPass returned when you created the server:
$ ssh root@104.130.13.36
The authenticity of host '104.130.13.36 (104.130.13.36)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 7e:8b:4c:a1:ee:ae:15:5d:f6:92:3f:fe:80:79:83:26.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '104.130.13.36' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-58-generic x86_64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.
Last login: Thu Jan 1 00:00:10 1970
root@swarm-test:~#
Delete a server
You can delete an unused server using the rack servers instance delete command. You have to specifiy the
$ rack servers instance list
ID Name Status PublicIPv4 PrivateIPv4 Image Flavor
18a93442-9da1-4d48-b80d-923543e96a70 swarm-test ACTIVE 104.130.13.36 10.176.192.231 5ed162cc-b4eb-4371-b24a-a0ae73376c73 general1-1
$ rack servers instance delete --id 18a93442-9da1-4d48-b80d-923543e96a70
Deleting instance [18a93442-9da1-4d48-b80d-923543e96a70]
```