Servers (compute instances)
Explanation · Updated Jun 2026
Coming from another cloud?
▸AWS·EC2 Instances
EC2 Instances
- Uses EC2 RunInstances API instead of Nova servers.create.
- Requires predefined instance type selection.
- Supports per-second On-Demand billing and Spot/Reserved options.
- Includes hibernation state not standard in OpenStack.
▸Hetzner·Cloud Servers
Cloud Servers
- Servers provisioned individually via Hetzner API (hcloud), not OpenStack Nova flavors; fixed instance types like CX11 (1 vCPU, 2GB RAM, 20GB NVMe).
- No flavor customization; choose from predefined shared/dedicated vCPU series.
- Billing hourly with monthly cap per server (e.g., €3.29/mo cap for CX11), charged even when powered off until deleted, unlike typical OpenStack stop-to-pause billing.
- Custom REST API at api.hetzner.cloud/v1/servers instead of OpenStack Nova /v2.1/servers (different auth, payloads, response formats).
Servers (compute instances)
When documentation or the OpenStack CLI says server, it means a compute instance on Quake AI: a running virtual machine backed by Nova, not a physical rack server and not a server group placement policy.
Why the word appears#
OpenStack Nova names the resource server in API paths and CLI commands:
bash
openstack server create ...
openstack server list
openstack server show <id>Terraform and Ansible modules often mirror that name (openstack_compute_instance_v2 still creates what Nova calls a server). Quake AI product language standardizes on instance in the Console and in customer-facing guides so the noun matches the service you are using.
On Quake AI#
| Surface | Noun you see |
|---|---|
| Console | Instance |
| Nova API / OpenStack CLI | Server |
| This documentation (default) | Instance |
Ansible openstack.cloud.server module | Server (OpenStack resource type) |
A server group is a different object: it controls whether instances land on the same hypervisor (affinity) or on different hypervisors (anti-affinity).
What to read next#
- Instances: canonical explanation of compute guests
- Virtual machines (VMs): VM vocabulary mapped to instances
- Compute API reference: Nova
serversendpoints and fields
Quick answers
- Why does `openstack image save` write a 0-byte file for my boot-from-volume instance?CLI
- Why does `openstack server create` fail with "Only volume-backed servers are allowed for flavors with zero disk"?CLIAPITerraform
- Why does my project still have a 10 GiB Cinder volume after I deleted my instance?CLIAPI
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