Visit the virtual machines page from the Katapult Compute sidebar and then click on the Add new virtual machine button. You will then be provided with a list of data centres available to choose from. Select the data centre that matches your preference for this particular machine to progress to the next step.
When it comes to choosing the operating system for your machine you have a few options to choose from, as below. Make a selection to proceed to the next step of the process.
These options are the standard options displayed within the virtual machine creation wizard, i.e. CentOS stock images etc.
If this is not your first Katapult virtual machine and you have created a disk template from another machine within Katapult, then you can use that disk template to deploy your machine. Your disk template will appear within the operating systems list. For more information on disk templates refer to the disk templates how-to guides.
If you do not want to use one of the Katapult default templates and do not have your own disk template then you can select to launch an empty machine. Once the machine has been created you can use an ISO file to install software of your own choosing. For more information on managing your custom ISO files (uploading / mounting, etc) then refer to the Custom ISO how-to guides.
Our virtual machines are priced in packages based on the resources each machine will require. The packages are grouped depending on the purpose of the virtual machine: ROCK for High CPU applications and BOULDER for High Memory use cases. There are several options available to you and you can upgrade/downgrade between them at anytime in the future as and when your requirements change. Make your desired selection to progress onto the detail input screen.
Now you've selected the data centre, your desired operating system (if applicable) and virtual machine specification we now need to collect some details in order to complete the setup process. Once you've provided all the required details, click Continue to build your machine - it shouldn't take long!
Hostname
Enter the desired hostname for this virtual machine.
Name
This is a user-friendly name for this virtual machine. If given it will be shown by this name in the virtual machine table.
Tags
You can optionally assign some tags to this virtual machine. You can then use tags to filter your machines for various disk backup policies or firewall rules.
Group
If you have created any virtual machine groups then you can assign this machine to one of them at creation. If you do not have any groups at this point then don't worry as you can always add it to a group later on. Refer to the virtual machine groups guide for more information on that topic.
These additional advanced options allow you to configure additional properties for your new virtual machine, such as a custom root password as opposed to a randomly generated one. Most of the fields in this part of the form are already explained in the form itself.
This section allows you to choose whether you want this virtual machine to be public-facing over the internet, or to be solely privately accessible by other machines in the Katapult network, i.e. another of your virtual machines. Once your virtual machine has been created you also have the option to add it to a virtual network too, but this is outside of the scope of this how to guide.
You can select here whom can have access to the virtual machine by the way of their SSH keys etc.