Preparing to use a CLI

To interact with the Rackspace cloud at the command line, you must have some of the same things you would need to interact by choosing options on a web page (the Cloud Control Panel) or by writing software (SDK or API):

  • A Rackspace cloud account

  • Credentials enabling access to that account

    • Your user name and password allow you to log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

    • After you log in, you can obtain your API key and your tenant ID (also called account number).

You also need to know something that you would need to work with an API:

  • The endpoint for the cloud service with which you want to interact

Note

Preparing to use APIs provides more detail about these prerequisites.

You must also have the following tools to enable you to interact with the cloud by typing commands:

  • A terminal emulator such as iTerm2 or PuTTY

  • A locally installed client capable of interacting with the cloud service that you have chosen

    • You can use cURL to send commands to any API endpoint

    • You can use OpenStack CLIs to send commands to specific cloud services.

In your terminal emulator, you can type commands to the client and, if you are properly authenticated, the client forwards your requests to the cloud service and forwards the service’s responses to you.

To preserve a series of commands so that they can be easily re-executed, you can place them within a script. To schedule automated execution of your script, you can invoke it from a cron job.

Beyond this general process, the details vary depending on the service. For product-specific introductions to the CLIs relevant to specific core infrastructure products, see the following sections: