OpenStack announced their sandbox called TryStack.
The saying goes like this “The Easiest Way To Try Out OpenStack”.

I manage to get an account via Facebook and testdrive TryStack.
The username and password were posted at Messages->Others. 🙂
The steps to launch an instance using TryStack
1. Creating Keypairs.
Name your keypair, mine is trystack. It will prompt to download.
Save the file will be used for SSH later.
Screenshot is here.

2. Allowing ports SSH and HTTP. In this case open to all networks for port 22 and 80.
Screenshot is here.

3. Click on Images, and put some server name, instance type, and user-data.
Screenshot is here.

4. Success page. Screenshot here.

5. Now try to SSH to the instance using the keypair downloaded.

chmod 600 ~/trystack/trystack.pem
ssh -i ~/trystack/trystack.pem ubuntu@<IP-ADDRESS> -v 
...
... 
ubuntu@apache-server:~$ tail /tmp/apache2_install.log 
finished install apache2
ubuntu@apache-server:~$ netstat -l
Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State      
tcp        0      0 *:www                   *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:ssh                   *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 [::]:ssh                [::]:*                  LISTEN     
udp        0      0 *:bootpc                *:*                                
Active UNIX domain sockets (only servers)
Proto RefCnt Flags       Type       State         I-Node   Path
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     4620     @/com/ubuntu/upstart
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     6882     /var/run/apache2/cgisock.952
ubuntu@apache-server:~$ 

Very nice and cool..! Don’t you think? 🙂

Update March 20,2012:
Here’s a good tutorial also using nova client from Sagar.