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.. _cyclades-user-guide:

Cyclades user guide

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Welcome!

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In Cyclades, you can create your own virtual machines, manage them and connect them via private networks.

When you first enter the Cyclades homepage, the main menu bar will appear in front of your screen:

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How to create a VM?

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Initially, as in most important things, you have to press the big bright button! (|image7_png|)

**Step 1:**

Select the operating system you want for your VM

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You can choose between Windows 2008 Server Edition or different distributions of Linux (with or without a GUI).

**Step 2:**

Depending on the OS you have selected, ~okeanos has preselected some of the VM's characteristics.

If you want, you can change them now!

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You can select how many cores your processor will have, how many GB of RAM your system will boast , or the size of your disk drive.

Alternatively, you can simply choose the power scale of your VM, ie Small, Medium or Large.

**Step 3:**

Name your VM!

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At this point, you can name your VM and give it a role (MailServer, Proxy, etc.).

The above do not affect the VM you create. They merely help you with categorising your arsenal of VMs!

As for the ssh keys, they can be regarded as your "fingerprint", large alphanumeric sequences that allow you to access remote machines without ever having to enter your username/password.

More details about the process of creating these keys can be found in `How can I create SSH keys?`_.

**Step 4:**

Confirmation

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At this point you will see a summary of your choices. If everything seems fine to you, by clicking the "create machine" button, your order will be processed and your VM will be available in no time!

And of course, do not forget to save the password that will appear on your screen, since for security reasons there is absolutely no other way to retrieve it!

.. _cyclades-connection-guide:

How do I connect to a VM?

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Now that you have created your machine, you can connect to it. We have created the following guides to help decompose the connecting process into a set of simple commmands and clicks-clicks, having the less computer savvy user in mind. Before we begin with the guides, we need to clarify some terms that might be new to an ~okeanos user, but are important to help choose what guide suits his/her needs:

* **Host machine** is the computer you are using in your home i.e. your laptop, your PC

* **Guest machine** is the target VM you want to connect to in ~okeanos

* **Graphical connection** is your typical connection type, the one with the fancy graphics that you most propably use in your host machine. *(Not available for Debian Base and CentOS guest machines)* 

* **Command-line connection** is a less typical connection type, where navigating and using your VM consists of typing commands to a terminal. *(Not available for Windows guest machines)*

With that clarified, you can jump right into the appropriate guide

* `Windows host to Windows guest [Graphical]`_

* `Windows/Linux host to Linux guest [Graphical]`_

* `Windows/Linux host to Linux guest [Command-line]`_

* `Linux host to Windows guest [Graphical]`_

* `Connecting via console`_