How to Create a Virtual Machine

1. Create or import SSH key pair

In the cloud console, navigate to Compute > Key Pairs and create a key pair or import your public key.

Keep the private key secure on your workstation and limit file permissions to owner-read.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/monal-cloud

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/monal-cloud

2. Prepare security group rules

Create a security group for the VM and add least-privilege ingress rules.

1. Add inbound TCP 22 from your office or personal static IP.
2. Add inbound TCP 80 and 443 only if hosting web traffic.
3. Leave wide-open inbound rules disabled unless absolutely required.

3. Launch the instance

Go to Compute > Instances > Create Instance. Choose image, flavor, key pair, network, and security group.

For naming, use environment and workload markers such as prod-nginx-web-01.

1. Image: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
2. Flavor: 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM for small production workloads
3. Storage: Boot volume of at least 40 GB for web stacks
4. Network: attach private VPC subnet
5. Security Group: select previously created web policy

4. Attach floating IP and verify access

Allocate a floating IP from the external network and associate it with the instance port.

Use SSH to verify bootstrap completion and update system packages.

ssh -i ~/.ssh/monal-cloud ubuntu@<floating-ip>

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade