SSH keys are managed at the account/team level via /v2/account/keys and then referenced by ID/fingerprint when creating Droplets, whereas OpenStack Nova keypairs are typically created per project/tenant and managed via the Nova API.
DigitalOcean explicitly notes that including a key during Droplet creation embeds it into the root user’s authorized_keys, whereas OpenStack’s keypair injection mechanism is generally cloud-init/metadata-service driven and may vary by image/cloud config.
DigitalOcean tokens/scopes model for API authorization (bearer tokens with scopes like ssh_key:read) differs from OpenStack Keystone’s token + role-based policy model.
DigitalOcean documentation emphasizes that post-creation SSH key changes are performed inside the guest OS (not via control panel), whereas OpenStack users may rely more heavily on metadata/cloud-init or config management patterns post-boot.
Use these commands to create, list, show, and delete key pairs in your cloud projects. Replace KEYPAIR_NAME with the name of your key pair. When you create a key pair without a public key, the command prints the private key to stdout. Save it before the command exits.
The server generates a new key pair and prints the private key to stdout. The server does not store the private key, so save it before the command exits. Use --private-key PRIVATE_KEY_FILE to write the private key to a file instead of stdout (see "Generate a key pair and save the private key" below).