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Getting started

A tour of the portal

The Breqwatr Cloud Portal (Strata) is where you look at and manage what runs in your projects, and where you manage your account. This page walks through the areas you'll use first and what each one is for.

Before you start

The layout

The dashboard for learn-demo-project, with the sidebar on the left, the project switcher in the top bar, and a ca-central card showing instance, vCPU and volume counts, memory, storage and floating IP use, and the Create volume and Launch instance buttons

Every page has the same frame:

  • The top bar shows the project you're working in and, on the project's pages, the region. Your account menu is on the right.
  • The sidebar lists the project's resources by type, then the organisation's pages.
  • The dashboard sums up the project with a card for each region: how many instances and volumes it has there, how much of its quota is used, and shortcuts to Create volume and Launch instance. Below the cards is the project's recent activity.

Projects and regions

The project switcher open in the top bar, listing learn-demo-project with a tick beside it and a Manage projects link

Choose the project name in the top bar to switch projects. Everything in the sidebar, from instances to load balancers, belongs to the project shown there.

The region switcher open in the top bar on the Instances page, with ca-central ticked

On the project's pages, choose the region next to the project name to switch regions. On the public cloud the regions are ca-central (Ontario), the default, and ca-east (Quebec). Resources and quotas are per region: an instance in ca-central doesn't appear while ca-east is selected.

Compute

The Instances page listing web-01 and web-02, both running Ubuntu on the v1.c1r2 flavour, with their IP addresses and creation times, and a New instance button

Instances lists the project's instances with their status, operating system, flavour and address. Choose an instance to see its networks, security groups and volumes, and the actions you can take on it, including Console, Server log, Resize and Delete.

The New instance form, with web-03 as the name, Browse buttons for the image and flavour, a disk size of 20 GB, Delete volume when instance is deleted ticked, Storage backend on Use default, a network list, security group checkboxes and a user data box

New instance launches one. You choose an image and a flavour from their Browse... pickers, the size of the root volume, a network, security groups and optional user data. An SSH Key field appears once you choose a Linux image. Launch your first instances walks through it.

Storage

The Volumes page listing an available 50 GB volume named db-data and two 20 GB boot volumes in use by web-01 and web-02, with a New volume button

  • Volumes lists the project's block storage volumes: every instance's root volume, and any data volumes you create.
  • Images lists the public images Breqwatr provides and your project's own.
  • Snapshots lists volume snapshots.

Images, flavours and instances explains how they fit together.

Networking

The Networks page listing two networks, default and app-net, each with its address range, gateway, DHCP enabled and an Active status, and a New network button

  • Networks lists the project's networks and their address ranges.
  • IP Addresses is where you allocate floating IPs and associate them with instances.
  • Security Groups holds the rules that decide what traffic reaches your instances.
  • Load balancers lists the project's load balancers.

The web security group's page, with ingress rules for TCP 80 and 443 from anywhere and TCP 22 from 203.0.113.0/24

Choose a security group to see its rules and add one with Add rule. Networking model covers networks, floating IPs and security groups.

The Load balancers page listing web-lb with its VIP address and an Active status, and a New load balancer button

A three-tier web app builds an application behind two load balancers.

Kubernetes

The Clusters page under Kubernetes, with no clusters yet, a New cluster button and a note that creating a cluster from the CLI needs an unrestricted application credential

Clusters lists the project's Kubernetes clusters, which run on BKS. You own each cluster you create, its control plane and worker nodes included, and everything running on it. As the page notes, creating a cluster from the CLI needs an unrestricted application credential; Application credentials and clouds.yaml explains the difference.

Quota

The Quota page, showing memory, storage, instances, vCPUs and floating IPs in use against each limit, and an empty request history

Quota → Overview shows how much of the project's quota is used in the selected region, and the history of quota increase requests. Quotas and your bill explains quotas and how to ask for more.

Your account

Open the account menu at the top right and choose My Account.

The lower part of the profile page: the organisation Vantix Inc with the Member role, an SSH Keys list with one key, first-instance, and Add key, Cloud credentials with Manage cloud credentials, and Support access with 1 hour, 24 hours and 7 days buttons

Your profile holds settings that belong to you rather than to a project:

  • Details and Password: your name, email, timezone and language, and changing your password.
  • Organisation: the organisation you're working in, and your role in it.
  • SSH Keys: the public keys you can choose when you launch a Linux instance.
  • Cloud credentials: application credentials for the OpenStack CLI, OpenTofu and Ansible.
  • Two-factor authentication: your MFA settings and recovery codes.
  • Support access: lets Breqwatr support sign in as you for a limited time while they help with a problem. It's off until you turn it on.

The Create application credential form, with a project list, an optional name, Expiration set to Never, and Unrestricted (dangerous) unticked

Cloud credentials → Manage cloud credentials → Create credential makes a credential for one project. Expiration starts at Never; set an expiry instead. Application credentials and clouds.yaml covers it step by step.

The organisation

The last part of the sidebar is the organisation's:

  • Team: the people in the organisation and their roles.
  • Projects: the organisation's projects.

Billing, with the month's usage, invoices and pricing, is for organisation owners and admins. Quotas and your bill covers it.

Impact

  • Each project's resources are in one place, grouped by type, so it's easy to see what a project runs and what it's using.
  • The portal and the API show the same resources: an instance created with the OpenStack CLI or OpenTofu appears in the portal straight away, and the other way round.

Next

Projects, users and roles explains how your organisation, its projects and its people fit together.

Further reading