Deploy the development environment template with OpenTofu

Stand up a bastion host on a floating IP, development VMs on a private network, and a shared block volume exported over NFS at /srv/shared using the validated OpenTofu template dev-environment. Cloud-init installs a configurable dev_tools package set on every instance.

Prerequisites#

You need:

• A Quake AI account with application credentials and an SSH key pair already uploaded to your project
• OpenTofu 1.6.0 or later (installation guide)
• OpenStack credentials sourced into the shell (source openrc.sh). See the OpenStack CLI guide.
• A copy of the dev-environment template from the template reference page
• Enough project quota for two s1a.medium dev instances, one s1a.small bastion, one 100 GB block volume, and one floating IP

Step 1: Configure variables#

Copy terraform.tfvars.example to terraform.tfvars and set:

key_name = "YOUR_KEY_NAME"

Defaults for dev_vm_count, flavors, volume size, and dev_tools packages are documented on the Development Environment reference page.

Step 2: Apply the template#

From the template directory, run:

tofu init
tofu plan
tofu apply

Type yes when prompted. Cloud-init on the dev VMs and bastion can take a few more minutes after tofu apply returns.

When the run finishes, note bastion_ip, dev_instance_ips, and nfs_server_ip from the outputs. Dev VM 1 always receives cidrhost(private_cidr, 10) and serves the NFS export from that address.

Step 3: Verify the shared mount and tooling on a dev VM#

SSH to dev VM 1 through the bastion floating IP:

BASTION=$(tofu output -raw bastion_ip)
DEV1=$(tofu output -json dev_instance_ips | jq -r '.[0]')
ssh -i YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH -J ubuntu@${BASTION} ubuntu@${DEV1}

On dev VM 1, confirm the shared volume is mounted at /srv/shared:

df -h /srv/shared
mount | grep /srv/shared
command -v git jq tmux python3

Write a marker file on the shared directory from dev VM 1:

echo "shared from $(hostname)" | sudo tee /srv/shared/shared-check.txt
exit

SSH to dev VM 2 and confirm the same file is visible through NFS:

DEV2=$(tofu output -json dev_instance_ips | jq -r '.[1]')
ssh -i YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH -J ubuntu@${BASTION} ubuntu@${DEV2} 'cat /srv/shared/shared-check.txt && mount | grep /srv/shared'

Next steps#

• Development Environment template
• Simple VM with Floating IP template
• AI-native development

Clean up#

Run tofu destroy from the project directory when finished. Type yes to confirm. Verify in the Console that the instances, volume, and floating IP are gone.