IBM Cloud: Virtual Server
In the cloud computing world, the competition is tough and new offering are coming to the market non-stop. This is great news for consumers since it provides a broad choice of solutions that fits our needs and lowers the cost. This article describes one of the available cloud offerings from IBM and guides you through the setup process of your own IBM Cloud Virtual Server.
Getting Started
The first thing is the registration. Go to cloud.ibm.com website and click “Create an IBM Cloud account”. Follow the directions and confirm your email address. When you are done, your account should be up and running. Keep in mind that IBM often runs promotions to attract new users. At the time of writing this article, IBM offers $200 in credit to anyone who registers with IBM Cloud and $1200 credit as a part of “Cognitive Class.ai” that can be used towards Watson cognitive solutions. This is a great way to learn about the IBM Cloud and try it out without any commitments.
IBM Cloud has multiple offering for all kinds of purposes, but we are interested in a Virtual Server. By expending the navigation menu in the top left corner, you will find “Classic Infrastructure” tab. This will bring the solution infrastructure page. The “Devices” button will reveal more options, including “Virtual Server” tile.
“Public Virtual Server” is the easiest option to start with. Choose a public instance and configure the server to fit your needs. You have an option to choose a number of CPU cores, RAM, GPU, storage, etc. For the sake of the example, the current configuration consists of the most basic instance with 1 CPU, 2GB RAM, and 100GB of local SSD storage.
For security reasons, you should add an “ssh key” to the configuration. You can generate a key by following this tutorial and add it in the “SSH keys” section. This will enable you to log in into the server without typing your password and, as a result, mitigates a chance that someone will break in by applying a brute force algorithm to crack the password.
When all the above steps are completed, click the create button and, in a matter of minutes, the virtual server will be up and running. From here, go to the “Resource list” to see the newly created server and click on it. This will open the info page where you can find a public IP address. This address is needed to log in into the server from your terminal. Given that you have your “ssh key” set up during the server configuration, you can simply type “ssh root@<public IP address>” where <public IP address> is the number you find on the server information page. For example, in order to log in into the current server, we can find that the public IP address is “52.117.68.24 and by running “ssh root@52.117.68.24” in the terminal window, we are greeted with this welcome screen:
The virtual server instance is running and we can start using it. The setup process is very simple and in a few clicks, you have your own server running in IBM Cloud.
Additional information can be found on IBM’s website.
