Once you have created an account or logged in to an existing one you are ready to create a virtual machine. Here is a full example:

$ bigv vm new
What is the name of the VM you wish to create?  web1
What is the memory that you want for your VM, in GiB?  2
What is the number of CPU cores that you want for your VM?  2
What is your comma-separated list of disc specifications?  sata:25
Please choose an option:
1. none
2. centos-5.6
3. centos-6.0
4. lucid
5. maverick
6. natty
7. squeeze
8. symbiosis
What is the Linux distribution to install on the
virtual machine?  7
Root password: 4ru24RWQ3u2c
Waiting for web1 to come up.
...........
The server is up!
------------------------------------------------------------  Image:  squeeze  -
Root password: OXMecWr9K
Distribution:  squeeze

--------------------  VM shop: 2 cores, 2 GiB RAM, 25.0 GiB on 1 disc (£0.00)  -
Power:         on
CD-ROM:        (none)
Console users: TODO
Disc vda:                                               25.0 GiB, sata grade
Net :                      213.138.100.223, 2001:41c8:51:df:feff:ff:fe00:1fb

And that's it - the system will start setting itself up immediately. You can connect to its console, but the system should be booted fully within 5 minutes, and you should be able to connect via SSH. Note that you need to connect to the main IP address not the management address.

The parameters are explained below:

Virtual machine name

Each virtual machine must have a unique name within a particular group (or if you're not using groups, it just needs to be unique to you, e.g. 'web1'. It can only be lower-case letters, numbers and dashes.

Account name

If you have control over more than one account, you need to tell the system which one to use here.

Username

Your username, if the system doesn't already know it.

Password

Your password, if the system doesn't already know it.

Memory

The amount of memory, in megabytes, to allocate to your VM. During the (β) there are no restrictions on the amount of memory you can use, but when we start billing your systems will be rounded up to the next price.

Cores

The number of CPU cores to allocate to your VM - you can have from 1-16. As with memory, when we start billing, your system will have its specs rounded up to the next price. So don't create 16 core machine unless you intend you pay £700-odd per month at some point!

Disc specification

This is slightly obtuse. You need to tell the system how many discs, and of what size. e.g. sata:25 creates a single disc of 25GiB. sas:25,sata:100 creates two discs, one of 25GiB on faster discs, and another of 100GiB.

Distribution

This tells our system imager what distribution to put on your server. Not all of them have been tested with BigV yet, but in order of confidence:

• symbiosis: Bytemark Symbiosis (which is based on Debian/lenny)
• squeeze: Debian 6.0 (squeeze)
• lenny: Debian 5.0 (lenny)
• centos-5.6: Centos 5.6
• lucid: Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid)
• natty: Ubuntu 11.04 (natty)

There are also some older, less relevant distributions with predictable names if you really need them.

Parameters fed back to you

Once you've created your virtual machine, the system will automatically assign some parameters:

Root password

Our imager will set up your system with a random root password. Once it has finished its work, you should be able to connect to your system's main ip address.

IP addresses

Your system will be assigned a single IPv4 address IPv6 address. Currently the IPv4 address

Management address

When you use the vm connect command to view your system's graphical or serial console, bigv connects to this dedicated IP address. This IP address should be up as long as your machine is started, but since it's run by BigV itself, you can reliably connect to it even if you've misconfigured your machine, or it hasn't booted properly. You won't need to use this directly though.

MAC address

Your VM will have an ethernet address that is unique to your system; this is usually only relevant when you're using private LANs.