Table of Contents

Introduction

You can deploy Items from the EWC Community Hub to provision cloud resources such as compute instances, networking, and storage. This guide shows just one of many use-cases. We will deploy an Item of Technology  Terraform Module, to 1) create an Ubuntu 24.04 instance with GPU, 2) safely modify its attachments (public IP address, additional disks), 3) clean everything up afterwards.

Prerequisites

• OpenStack Application Credentials: To authorize the creation of the compute instance itself:

  • Request your credentials (if none available).

• SSH access: In this example, by impersonating the default Linux account of EWC's Ubuntu VM images via a valid keypair:

  • Create a keypair (if none available).
  • Import SSH keys (public) (into OpenStack for automatic distribution upon VM creation).

• EWC Documentation: reference for image_name and flavor_name supported on your deployment site:

  • VM images available
  • VM plans

• Work environment equipped with:

  • Git ≥ 2.0
  • Terraform ≥ 1.5
  • Python ≥ 3.9 (required by the OpenStack provider).

...

If any of the above raises an error, or the version is older than recommended, install/update via your package manager of preference. You can also follow thee official Terraform documentation for OS-specific installation steps.

Step-by-Step Deployment

1. Download the Item

Find the Item's detail page on the EWC Community Hub Dashboard, namely the OpenStack Compute Instance Item. On the Item details page, pay attention to the following:

...

$ git checkout 1.4.0

2. Setup Authentication

Terraform must authenticate against EWC's OpenStack API. If you lack credentials, follow these steps to request them.

With your credentials file at hand, export its content as environmental variables within your workspace, in the same way you would if you were using the OpenStack CLI.

3. Customize Your Target Host

...

# main.tf
locals {
  keypair_name       = "john-cloudy-publickey" # <- REPLACE WITH CORRECT KEYPAIR NAME
  virtual_image      = "Ubuntu 22.04 NVIDIA_AI"
  plan               = "vm.a6000.4"
  app_name           = "demo" # <- REPLACE WITH PREFERABLE NAME
  instance_name      = "john-cloudy" # <- REPLACE WITH PREFERABLE NAME
  instance_index     = 1 # <- REPLACE WITH PREFERABLE INDEX
  private_networks   = ["private"]
  external_network   = "external"
  security_groups    = ["ssh"]
  instance_has_fip   = true
  extra_volume       = true
  extra_volume_size  = 512
  extra_volume2      = true
  extra_volume2_size = 512

  tags = {
    environment     = "production" # <- REPLACE WITH PREFERABLE ENV INFO
    owner           = "john-cloudy" # <- REPLACE WITH PREFERABLE OWNER INFO
    deployment-tool = "terraform"
  }
}

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 0.14.0"
  required_providers {
    openstack = {
      source  = "terraform-provider-openstack/openstack"
      version = "~> 1.53.0"
    }
  }
}

data "openstack_images_image_v2" "image" {
  name        = local.virtual_image
  most_recent = true
}

data "openstack_compute_flavor_v2" "flavor" {
  name = local.plan
}

module "instance" {
  source = "./ewc-tf-module-openstack-compute"

  app_name       = local.app_name
  instance_name  = local.instance_name
  instance_index = local.instance_index
  image_id       = data.openstack_images_image_v2.image.id
  flavor_id      = data.openstack_compute_flavor_v2.flavor.id
  keypair_name   = local.keypair_name

  networks = local.private_networks

  instance_has_fip = local.instance_has_fip

  extra_volume       = local.extra_volume
  extra_volume_size  = local.extra_volume_size
  extra_volume2      = local.extra_volume2
  extra_volume2_size = local.extra_volume2_size

  security_groups = local.security_groups

  external_network_name = local.external_network

  tags = local.tags
}

4. Apply the Terraform Changes

Initialize and apply:

$ terraform init

...

$ ssh -T ubuntu@188.115.7.131 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa

4.1. (Optional) Update Customization & Re-run

...

...
module.instance.openstack_networking_floatingip_v2.fip[0]: Destruction complete after 8s
module.instance.openstack_blockstorage_volume_v3.instance_volume2[0]: Still destroying... [id=1201e3b3-0134-43a1-8ccc-85692ab76038, 00m10s elapsed]
module.instance.openstack_blockstorage_volume_v3.instance_volume2[0]: Destruction complete after 10s

Apply complete! Resources: 0 added, 0 changed, 4 destroyed.

4.2. (Optional) Cleaning Up

Optional but recommended; cleaning up any unused infrastructure its a chore, sometimes time-consuming, but important nontheless.

...

You will be prompted for confirmation. Make sure the resources listed for destruction are indeed related to your VM. Confirm to accept changes by typing yes.

Conclusion

All done! You now equipped to provision and teardown cloud infrastructure with a full-managed state, using nothing but the Community Hub and a couple of commands~🎉

Best Practices

• Use security groups to restrict traffic (e.g., only SSH or HTTPS).
• Pin provider versions in main.tf for reproducibility.
• Use terraform plan before every apply.
• Always add informative tags (tags = {…}) for easier costs traceability and administration.
• Consider versioning/backing up the main.tf  you created, as well as the terraform.tfstate file that resulted from the execution, using for example git. This helps to avoid loosing track of your the resources' state.

Troubleshooting

Checkout the troubleshooting documentation of the Item for information on common problems and how to troubleshoot them. For unresolved issues, check the GitHub issues for a similar problem, ask the community on the peer support channel of the EWC discussion platform. You may also place a tickets at EWC Support Portal when dealing with EWC open-sourced Items.

Related Articles

• Deploying by Technology: Ansible Playbook
• Deploying via ewccli
• Item Technology