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CloudNexus Docs
📖 Quickstart Guide

🚀 Getting Started

Welcome to CloudNexus. This guide will walk you through provisioning your first cloud infrastructure, configuring networking, and deploying an application in under 5 minutes.

📋 Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following ready:

  • ✓ CloudNexus account
  • ✓ Verified email & 2FA
  • ✓ Terminal / CLI access
  • ✓ SSH key pair (optional)

Overview

CloudNexus provides a unified control plane for compute, networking, storage, and security. You can manage resources via the web dashboard, REST API, or the official cnx-cli tool. This guide uses the CLI for speed and reproducibility.

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Note: New accounts receive $200 in free credits valid for 30 days. No credit card required to start.

1. Create & Verify Your Account

Sign up at dashboard.cloudnexus.io and complete email verification. Enable two-factor authentication for enhanced security and API access.

Once logged in, navigate to Settings → API Keys and generate a new personal access token with admin scope. Copy and store it securely.

2. Install & Configure CLI

The CloudNexus CLI abstracts complex API calls into simple commands. Install it via npm, Homebrew, or direct binary:

Terminal 
# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://cli.cloudnexus.io/install.sh | sh

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew tap cloudnexus/cli && brew install cnx-cli

# Windows (PowerShell)
iwr -useb https://cli.cloudnexus.io/install.ps1 | iex

Initialize the CLI with your API token:

Terminal 
cnx-cli init --token YOUR_API_KEY --region us-east-1
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Success! You should see CloudNexus CLI configured successfully. in your terminal.

3. Provision Your First Instance

Let's create a high-performance virtual machine optimized for developer workloads:

Terminal 
cnx-cli create instance \
  --name my-first-server \
  --type t3.medium \
  --image ubuntu-22.04-lts \
  --region us-east-1 \
  --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --auto-scaling false

The command returns a JSON payload with your instance ID, public IP, and initial SSH credentials. This typically completes in under 30 seconds thanks to our NVMe-backed provisioning pipeline.

4. Configure Networking & Security

By default, new instances have a firewall rule that only allows SSH (port 22). To expose a web application, create a security group rule:

Terminal 
cnx-cli create firewall-rule \
  --instance-id i-8f3a2b1c \
  --port 443 \
  --protocol tcp \
  --source 0.0.0.0/0 \
  --description "Allow HTTPS traffic"
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Security Best Practice: Always restrict --source to specific CIDR ranges when possible. Use 0.0.0.0/0 only for public-facing services.

5. Connect & Deploy

SSH into your new instance using the provided public IP:

Terminal 
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 ubuntu@203.0.113.42

Once connected, pull your application code, install dependencies, and start your service. CloudNexus automatically handles IP routing and load balancing if you scale horizontally later.

Bash (on instance) 
git clone https://github.com/your-org/app.git
cd app
npm install
npm start

Visit https://203.0.113.42 in your browser. Your infrastructure is now live! 🎉

CLI Cheatsheet

Quick reference for common CloudNexus operations:

Command Description
cnx-cli instances listView all running VMs & status
cnx-cli scale --count 3Horizontal auto-scaling trigger
cnx-cli backups create --autoSchedule automated snapshots
cnx-cli logs stream --service apiReal-time log aggregation
cnx-cli destroy --forceTerminate resources & clean up

Stuck or need help?

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