In the Platform users can provision a virtual machine rapidly. Head to the Compute page from Compute >> VM menu.

Before you start

We recommend this setup first for before creating your first VM :

1. Create SSH Keys

   SSH keys for authentication when logging into VM is more secure than password-based authentication. After you upload your SSH public key to your account, you can add it to new VM you create.

   Click your full name on the sidebar, then select Settings. Go to the SSH Keys tab, then click the + button to add a new data.

2. Create VPC

   VPC creates a private network interface within the same organization. It’s free and increases security.

   Go to the Network >> VPC menu, then click on the Create button on the top right of the page.

Once they are entered, you can use them to create VMs.

Creating a VM

Click Create button on the top right of the Compute page to open Create Compute page. Configure new VM with following options:

• Choose the image your VM will be created from. Initially, you can choose from two categories of images:
  • Distributions are basic Unix-like images with no additional software, including Ubuntu, CentOS, and Debian.
  • Marketplace images include pre-configured applications, like Docker, Nginx, or Kubernetes, to help simplify getting started.

• Choose the amount of RAM, storage space, and vCPU your VM will have. Click the CHOOSE A PLAN button to see more plans.

• Add an external volume to your VM if needed. There is also an option for the automatic or manual format, as well as a file system option if you want the storage to be formatted automatically.

• Next, choose the method you want to use to log in to your VM. There are some options of authentication:
  • SSH keys, which provide more security than a password.
  • Password, which allows you to create your own password for the new VM.
  Some OS marketplace is set up with a default username and password, if you choose it, you don’t need to fill in this section.

• Give each VM a name that is used as the server’s hostname. Default names are provided based on the options you selected, but you can modify them to suit your needs. Tags to organize and relate VM is optional to be filled.

• Choose whether you don’t want to use a public IP address, use an automatically assigned IP, or use a reserved IP for your VM.

• Give your VM a name. This name will appear in the application.

If the organization billing type is Metered, there will be a price estimation for creating a VM on the right side of the page.

Click Create button to start deploying it.

The new VM will be displayed in the list with Starting status. Once the status is changed to Running, your VM is ready to use. You can click on the VM name to see the details.

In the VM details page, users can monitor VM status and usage, and also manage VM through our web terminal, on one page. VNC Client is also available and it will be opened in a new tab.

Monitoring graph is available for VM condition in the last 1 hour:

• Processor usage
• Network usage
• Memory usage
• Storage IOPs

Resize is the ability to change the size of a virtual machine, allowing it to upscale or downscale according to a user’s needs.

Only the memory or the CPU size of virtual machines can be upscaled and downscaled, disk size can only be upscaled. For virtual machines with attached volumes, the volumes are not affected during the resizing process.

Resize VM is available on the VM details page.

Note

The resize feature complies with the policy for allowed VM sizes. You can resize a VM only to sizes that are allowed or not greater than the resource quota of the organization.

After you increase the size of a VM boot disk volume, you must use file system–specific commands to extend the file system to the new, larger size. You can do this as soon as you have resized the VM in the detail page.

To extend a file system on Linux, you need to:

1. Extend the partition, if your volume has one.
2. Extend the file system.

Use the following procedure to extend the file system for a resized volume. Check whether the volume has a partition. Use the lsblk command.

lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0     7:0    0 63.3M  1 loop /snap/core20/1879
loop1     7:1    0 91.9M  1 loop /snap/lxd/24061
loop2     7:2    0 53.2M  1 loop /snap/snapd/19122
loop3     7:3    0 73.9M  1 loop /snap/core22/864
loop4     7:4    0 59.9M  1 loop /snap/go/10389
loop5     7:5    0 40.9M  1 loop /snap/snapd/20290
loop6     7:6    0 63.5M  1 loop /snap/core20/2015
sda       8:0    0   40G  0 disk
vda     252:0    0  151G  0 disk
├─vda1  252:1    0 79.9G  0 part /
├─vda14 252:14   0    4M  0 part
└─vda15 252:15   0  106M  0 part /boot/efi
vdb     252:16   0    1M  0 disk

Extend the partition. Use the growpart command and specify the partition to extend. In the following example, we want to grow disk /dev/vda in partition 1.

sudo growpart /dev/vda 1

The output will be similar to:

sudo growpart /dev/vda 1
CHANGED: partition=1 start=227328 old: size=167544799 end=167772127 new: size=316442591 end=316669919

Recheck the volume partition with lsblk command.

Use df -hT command to check the file system.

df -hT
Filesystem     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev           devtmpfs  3.7G     0  3.7G   0% /dev
tmpfs          tmpfs     759M  1.7M  757M   1% /run
/dev/vda1      ext4       78G   24G   55G  30% /
tmpfs          tmpfs     3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs          tmpfs     5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs          tmpfs     3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop1     squashfs   92M   92M     0 100% /snap/lxd/24061
/dev/loop0     squashfs   64M   64M     0 100% /snap/core20/1879
/dev/loop2     squashfs   54M   54M     0 100% /snap/snapd/19122
/dev/vda15     vfat      105M  6.1M   99M   6% /boot/efi
/dev/loop3     squashfs   74M   74M     0 100% /snap/core22/864
/dev/loop4     squashfs   60M   60M     0 100% /snap/go/10389
/dev/loop5     squashfs   41M   41M     0 100% /snap/snapd/20290
/dev/loop6     squashfs   64M   64M     0 100% /snap/core20/2015
tmpfs          tmpfs     759M     0  759M   0% /run/user/1000

Awanio uses Ext4 file system, so for that, use the resize2fs command and specify the name of the file system that you noted in the previous step.

sudo resize2fs /dev/vda1

The output will be similar to:

sudo resize2fs /dev/vda1
resize2fs 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
Filesystem at /dev/vda1 is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 10, new_desc_blocks = 19
The filesystem on /dev/vda1 is now 39555323 (4k) blocks long.

Use df -hT command again to check the final size.

A snapshot allows for a complete copy of a virtual machine at a point in time to be created for backup purposes. Snapshots can be used to help prepare your environment for recovery.

You can create a snapshot of the virtual machine that was created or deployed in the Awanio Platform. Snapshots can be created on a schedule, or immediately. The snapshot creation schedule can be set hourly, daily, or weekly.

Backup VM is available on the VM details page and Backups or Snapshots page, accessed from Backups or Snapshots menu.

This allows users to attach/detach a public IP address to an existing VM. If you created a VM without a public IP address, you can attach the public IP address afterward. To do so, you must first reserve a public IP address. Then on the VM details page, the Public IP address section. Click the + button, and then select an IP address from the list of the reserved IP address.

When the VM already has a public IP address and you want to detach it, click the x button next to the public IP address. A dialog will appear to confirm your action.