Compute how-to guides

Procedural guides for the Compute service: launching instances on public or private networks, managing images and snapshots, accessing the VM console, and running Windows Server. For background on the underlying primitives, see the concept pages.

How to Back Up and Restore a Quake AI VM: Protect a VM with snapshots, copy backups off-project for disaster recovery, and run a restore drill that proves you can boot from the backup. Instance snapshots live in the same project as the source...
How to Boot a Virtual Machine from an ISO Image: Install a custom operating system on Quake AI by booting from an ISO image. This process uses two volumes: a blank root drive and an ISO-backed drive. After the installation completes, you can...
How to Build a Golden VM Image with Packer: Build a reusable golden VM image with Packer and its OpenStack builder, then publish the result to the Quake AI Images service (OpenStack Glance) so you can launch identical instances from it.
How to Configure a VM with Cloud-init: Write cloud-init user data, pass it when you launch an instance, and confirm the guest applied your baseline on first boot.
How to Create a Virtual Machine Image: Upload a custom OS image to your Quake AI project so you can use it to launch instances. Quake AI supports QCOW2, RAW, and ISO disk formats. Use QCOW2 for most use cases.
How to Create a Virtual Machine Instance: Create a virtual machine (VM) instance with your choice of operating system, hardware flavor, and network configuration. This guide covers the common path: booting from a public image onto an existing...
How to Create a VM on a Private Network: Create a virtual machine on an isolated private network with internet access via a router and floating IP. This is the recommended approach for production workloads.
How to Create a VM on a Public Network: Create a virtual machine directly on the PublicEphemeral network for quick testing. The instance gets a public IP address automatically, so you can SSH in immediately.
How to Create an Instance Snapshot: Create a point-in-time snapshot of a running instance. Snapshots are stored as images and can be used to launch new instances or create golden images for repeatable deployments.
How to Deploy a Containerized Application with Docker Compose on a Quake AI VM: Run a multi-container application from a docker-compose.yml file on a Quake AI virtual machine. You install Docker and the Compose plugin on the VM, move your project onto it, supply environment...
How to Harden a Quake AI Virtual Machine: Harden a freshly provisioned Linux virtual machine before it serves traffic. Restrict network access with security groups, reduce SSH exposure in the guest OS, add a host firewall, enable automatic...
How to Launch a Windows Server VM: Important: You are responsible for meeting all licensing requirements.
How to Maintain a Quake AI VM Over Its Lifetime: Keep a production VM healthy over months of use: change its flavor when load grows, expand attached storage, reboot safely, rotate logs, and decommission the instance without leaving orphaned...
How to Operate a Running Quake AI VM: Use these procedures to connect over SSH, rotate access, attach storage, check resource usage, transfer files, and recover access to a running VM.
How to Patch and Update a Quake AI VM: Patch the guest operating system manually or on a schedule. Plan reboots for kernel updates, and create a Quake AI snapshot as a rollback point before a major upgrade.
How to Provision a Production-ready VM: Walk through the decisions and steps to launch a virtual machine you can run a workload on: pick sizing, attach SSH access, place the instance on the right network, pass first-boot configuration, and...
How to Resize a Quake AI VM to a Dedicated-cpu Plan: Move a VM from a shared vCPU flavor (the Developer plan's starting point) to a dedicated vCPU flavor (Basic and custom dedicated packs). A flavor resize keeps the instance ID, boot volume, attached...
How to Schedule Recurring Jobs on a Quake AI VM: Run a command or script on a fixed schedule inside a Quake AI instance, using either cron or systemd timers.
How to Set a Password on a Virtual Machine Instance: Set a login password on an instance so you can access it via the web console. Passwords are an alternative to SSH key pairs for console-based access.
How to Use the Virtual Machine Console: Access a running virtual machine through a browser-based VNC terminal. The console lets you interact with the instance without SSH, which is useful during OS installation, when network access is...

Compute how-to guides

Compute how-to guides

Quick answers

Common Compute tasks

See Also