Select hosts where instances are launched With the appropriate permissions, you can select which host instances are launched on and which roles can boot instances on this host. To select the host where instances are launched, use the --availability_zone zone:host parameter on the nova boot command, For example: $ nova boot --image <uuid> --flavor m1.tiny --key_name test --availability-zone nova:server2 To specify which roles can launch an instance on a specified host, enable the create:forced_host option in the policy.json file. By default, this option is enabled for only the admin role. To view the list of valid compute hosts, use the nova hypervisor-list command, as follows: $ nova hypervisor-list +----+---------------------+ | ID | Hypervisor hostname | +----+---------------------+ | 1 | server2 | | 2 | server3 | | 3 | server4 | +----+---------------------+ Beginning in the Folsom release, the --availability_zone zone:host parameter replaces the --force_hosts scheduler hint parameter. Beginning in the Grizzly release, you can enable the create:forced_host option in the policy.json file to specify which roles can launch an instance on a specified host.