Secure Shell (SSH) is a UNIX-based command interface and protocol for securely getting access to a remote computer. One way of securing SSH access to your Server is to use a public/private key pair. This means that a public key is placed on the server and a private key is placed on your local workstation. Using a key pair makes it impossible for someone to log in by using just a password, as long as you set up SSH to deny password-based authentication. Before launching an instance, you must generate a public/private key pair and add the public key to your OpenStack environment.

1. Before creating any instances, we have to set up some security options. Go the ‘Project’ tab in the dashboard and click on the ‘Access & Security’
2. You can either edit the existing “default” security group or add a new security group. Then click on “Edit Rules” on the relevant group and first add a rule to enable incoming SSH connections on port 22.
3. Then add another rule to enable incoming ping request. Set -1 for ICMP type and code
4. Then we have to generate a key pair which will be used to authenticate users into the VMs. Click on the “Keypairs” tab on “Access & Security” page and click on “Create Keypair”.
5. Then provide a name for the keypair and click on “Create Keypair”. Download and save the key file.
6. Now we can create an instance using the security group and the key pair we created. Click on “Instances” link under “Project” tab and click on “Launch Instance”.
7. Under “Access & Security” tab we can select the key pair and the security group we created above.