In the Cloud Control Panel, you can attach descriptive tags to your cloud servers and other resources. Tags help you organize your infrastructure as it grows. You can use them to quickly find specific resources by using several different filtering mechanisms.

How to create a tag#

  1. Log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

  2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a Product > Rackspace Cloud.

  3. Select Servers > Cloud Servers.

  4. In the Cloud Servers list, click the gear icon next to the server name and select Add Tag.

  5. In the Add or remove tags popup box, type a tag label and then press Enter. You can enter as many tags as you want, pressing Enter after each one.

  6. When you are done adding tags, click Save Tags to commit your changes.

To find tagged instances, select the check boxes next to the tags in the Tag on the left side of the server’s list.

Tips for creating tags#

A few simple tags can help you identify a server’s purpose at a glance. You can also easily filter a long list of servers with several tags to distinguish one server type from another. Following are some tips for creating tags that can help you organize your cloud infrastructure.

Environment#

A server environment is a collection of instances that are meant to operate under similar conditions. An example of a server environment is a collection of development, staging, and production servers. Development servers are used when you are testing code that is still in flux. Staging servers provide a stable testing ground for code deemed to be complete. Production servers are where code goes when it’s passed testing and is ready to be used with real data or viewed by customers.

Function#

If you have specialized server instances, it can be convenient to quickly filter them by function, like web server, proxy, or database.

Role#

In a more complex environment, you might have primary and backup systems, primary and replica databases, or Domain name (DNS) servers. Tagging servers according to their role in the environment can help when you plan maintenance.

Operating system#

Tags can let you quickly see which servers are running Linux or Windows, or what Linux distributions are being used on each server (like the Ubuntu operating system or CentOS).

Summary#

These are some basic ideas for organizing servers with tags, but because tags are completely flexible, this is definitely not a comprehensive list. For example, you could also use tags to divide responsibilities among team members, to label servers that have only internal network interfaces active, and to track any other qualities that distinguish your servers from one another.