nova CLI

The OpenStack tool primarily used to manage Cloud Servers is written in Python and is called nova. It is also known as novaclient or python-novaclient.

Rackspace adds some additional functionality to the base OpenStack environment through OpenStack extensions. To have the best experience when using the novaclient with Rackspace, you should install the rackspace-novaclient package. It installs the required novaclient components and any necessary or useful extensions and plugins that are applicable to the Rackspace cloud.

We recommend that you use the Python Package Index (PyPI) to install novaclient because it installs dependencies and required packages for you.

Alternatively, you can download the rackspace-novaclient package from the GitHub repository for rackspace-novaclient.

The following OpenStack documents can help you install novaclient and learn to use it:

• Install the OpenStack command-line clients

• OpenStack Command-Line Interface Reference, especially at Compute command-line client

• nova CLI man page

Note

You can use OpenStack documentation to help you learn to use OpenStack CLIs in the Rackspace Cloud. OpenStack documents describe general practice; you should expect to supply some Rackspace-specific details. Use your Rackspace credentials where the OpenStack examples ask for OpenStack credentials.

For example, where you are asked for OS_USERNAME, supply your Rackspace username.

Rackspace publishes the following detailed instructions about novaclient, including how to install the client on most popular operating systems:

• In the Cloud Servers API documentation at Install the nova Client with the Cloud Networks Extension

• In Python-novaclient and the Rackspace Cloud

After you have novaclient installed, you must set up your environment so that you can authenticate to Rackspace and use the tools.