# tCloudStart Starts instances on Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud). This component accesses the cloud provider to be used (Amazon EC2) and launches instances, which are virtual servers in that cloud. If an instance to be launched does not exist, tCloudStart creates it. ## tCloudStart Standard properties These properties are used to configure tCloudStart running in the Standard Job framework. The Standard tCloudStart component belongs to the Cloud family. The component in this framework is available in all Talend products. ## Basic settings | Properties | Description | | --- | --- | | Access key and Secret key | Enter or paste the access key and the secret key required by
Amazon to authenticate your requests to its web services. These
access credentials are generated from the Security Credential tab of
your Amazon account page.

To enter the secret key, click the [...]
button next to the secret key field, and then in the pop-up dialog box enter the password
between double quotes and click OK to save the
settings. | | Cloud provider | Select the cloud provider to be used. | | Image | Enter the name of the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to be used to
launch an instance. This AMI defines the basic configuration of that
instance. | | Region and Zone | Enter the region and the zone to be used as the geographic
location where you want to launch an instance.

The syntax used to express a location is predefined by Amazon, for
example, *us-east-1* representing
the *US East (Northern Virginia)*
region and *us-east-1a*
representing one of the Availability Zones within that region. For
further information about available regions for Amazon, see Amazon's
documentation about regions and endpoints and as well Amazon's FAQ
about region and Availability Zone. | | Instance name | Enter the name of the instance to be launched. For example, you
can enter *Talend*.

Note that the upper letter will be converted to lower
letter. | | Instance count | Enter the number of instances to be launched. At runtime, the name
specified in the Instance name
field, for example *Talend*, will
be used as the initial part of each instance name, and letters and
numbers will be randomly added to complete each name. | | Instance type | Select the type of the instance(s) to be launched. Each type is
predefined by Amazon and defines the performance of every instance
you want to launch.

This drop-down list presents the API name of each instance type.
For further information, see Amazon's documentation about instance
types. | | Proceed with a Key pair | Select this check box to use Amazon Key Pair for your login to
Amazon EC2. Once selecting it, a drop-down list appears to allow you to select
:

| | Security group | Add rows to this table and enter the names of the security
groups to which you need to assign the instance(s) to be launched. The security
groups set in this table must exist on your Amazon EC2.

A security group applies specific rules on inbound traffic to
instances assigned to the group, such as the ports to be used. For further
information about security groups, see Amazon's documentation about security
groups.

Note that an instance can be assigned to a group by setting its security group
name or key pair name to jclouds#<$group\_name>, where
<$group\_name> identifies the group to which the
instance belongs. In this way, you can change the status of all instances or
running instances in one group at the same time using the
tCloudStop component. | ## Advanced settings | Properties | Description | | --- | --- | | Key Pair folder | Browse to, or enter the path to the folder you use to store the
created Key Pair file.

This field appears when you select Creating
a Key Pair in the Basic
settings tab view. | | Volumes | Add rows and define the volume(s) to be created for the instances
to be launched in addition to the volumes predefined and allocated
by the given Amazon EC2.

The parameters to be set in this table are the same parameters
used by Amazon for describing a volume.

If you need to remove automatically an additional volume after
terminating its related instance, select the check box in the
Delete on termination
column. | | tStatCatcher Statistics | Select this check box to collect the log data at the component
level. | ## Global Variables | Variables | Description | | --- | --- | | Global Variables | NODE\_GROUP: the name of the instance. This is an After variable and it
returns a string.


NODES: the instances launched. This is an After
variable and it returns an object.


ERROR\_MESSAGE: the error message generated by the
component when an error occurs. This is an After variable and it returns a string. This
variable functions only if the Die on error checkbox is
cleared, if the component has this checkbox.

A Flow variable functions during the execution of a component
while an After variable functions after the execution of the component.

To fill up a field or expression with a variable, press Ctrl+Space to access the variable list and choose the variable to use from
it.

For more information about variables, see [Using contexts and variables](https://help.qlik.com/talend/r/en-US/8.0/studio-user-guide/contexts-and-variables). | ## Usage | Usage guidance | Description | | --- | --- | | **Usage rule** | This component works standalone to launch an instance on Amazon
EC2. You can use this component to start the instance you need to deploy Jobs
on. |