Components for Launching Instances

These components are required to launch a compute instance:

Tenancy

The root compartment that contains all of your organization's compartments and cloud resources. The Service Enclave administrator creates the tenancy in which compartments are created. A tenancy administrator creates compartments in a tenancy where the compute resources are created. You must have a tenancy to have compartments where instances are launched.

Compartment

A collection of related resources that are only accessible by certain groups that have been given permission by an administrator in your organization. Compute instances are created in compartments. All compartments exist in a tenancy, which is the root compartment.

Virtual Cloud Network (VCN)

A virtual version of a traditional network—including subnets, route tables, and gateways—on which your compute instance runs. At least one cloud network must be set up by a Compute Enclave administrator before you launch compute instances.

SSH Key Pair

If the image that is used to launch the instance is configured to require Secure Shell (SSH) for authentication, then you need an SSH key pair before launching the instance. This requirement applies to instances launched from images provided with Private Cloud Appliance and by most UNIX type images. If the image is configured to use passwords instead, you need the password instead of the key pair.

Image

A template of a virtual hard drive that determines the operating system and other software for a compute instance. You can also launch compute instances using these images:

  • Images provided with Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

  • Custom images created from other instances

  • Import your own image

For more information about images, see Compute Images in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.

Shape

A template that determines the number of CPUs, amount of memory, and other resources allocated to a newly created compute instance. You choose the most appropriate shape when you launch a compute instance.

Metadata Key Limits

Metadata options enable you to attach important information to instances such as an SSH key, information for cloud-init to use, and labels and proxies for nodes in a Kubernetes Engine cluster node pool.

Metadata keys have the following limits, with the noted exceptions:

  • Metadata can have a maximum of 128 keys.

  • Key names can have a maximum of 255 characters.

  • Most key values can have a maximum of 255 characters.

The value of the ssh_authorized_keys metadata key can be more than 255 characters. This value must be a valid public key in OpenSSH format. Use a newline character to separate multiple keys.

The value of the user_data metadata key can be a maximum of 16KB. This value is data that cloud-init can use to run custom scripts or provide custom cloud-init configuration. For Linux instances with cloud-init configured, the user_data value is a Base64-encoded string of cloud-init user data. For more information, see cloud-init user data formats.