Create Instance

caution

Draft — needs screenshots. This section hasn't been through the docs-capture pipeline yet, so there are no screenshots. Steps are grounded in the current product code (routes and page components), not a live capture — verify against the running product once this section is captured.

From the Instances page, click Create Instance to open a step-by-step form. Each step is a card you complete in order; completed steps collapse to a one-line summary with an Edit link back to them, and a summary sidebar recaps your selections as you go. Steps adjust based on earlier choices:

1. Select use of CD/ISO — turn CD/ISO use on or off, and, if it's on, whether the instance should boot directly from the CD/ISO.
2. Select image to boot from (only if booting from a CD/ISO) — pick the ISO image to boot from.
3. Enable Factory Reset — turn factory reset on or off for the instance.
4. Choose an Image (skipped if booting directly from a CD/ISO) — pick the OS image to deploy from.
5. Select ISO to mount (only if using a CD/ISO without booting from it) — pick the ISO to mount.
6. Select Resources — choose a VM flavor, or fill in custom vCPU, memory, and disk specs; a resource group; one or more networks available to that resource group; a datastore for the boot disk (and, if you show the additional-disk selectors, for each extra disk the flavor/specs include); and, if the resource group has any, which PCI devices to attach.
7. Automate VM Restart — turn automatic VM restart on or off.
8. Optimize Storage For Latency — turn storage latency optimization on or off.
9. Select Keypairs — choose which SSH keypairs to inject.
10. Add cloud init data (only if the selected image supports cloud-init) — add cloud-init user data. See the cloud-init user data reference for formatting.
11. Add name & description — name the instance (required) and add an optional description, then Finish.

The same form can also provision a multi-node cluster instead of a single instance — that path is out of scope for this page.