Much of the power of Openstack is in the suite of application program interfaces (APIs) allowing the same functionality of the dashboard with the advantage of automating much of the provisioning process with only a few commands. Using the API means that all the actions can be added to a script that can be called to automatically and repeatedly build instances. You can also create template-like scripts so that with only minor modification to instance name, image and volume size, it is possible to build other instances and volumes quickly and without the need for clicking through the dashboard.
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Installing command-line tools (Ubuntu)
Before the tools are installed, you will want an environment that can use Python, as all of the Openstack command-line tools are written in that language. This can be your local desktop or it could be a virtual machine in the Rapid Access Cloud. The instructions outlined below will assume a Ubuntu 14.04 instance in the Rapid Access Cloud, a virtual machine running on your desktop or a native Ubuntu desktop. For OS X, refer to the section at the end of this page.
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