Upload and manage images

Last changed: 2024-10-04

Instead of using our GOLD images, you may create an image directly by uploading your own cloud image in raw or QCOW2 format. This may be used as the base for your instances.

Upload an image

  1. Log in to the dashboard

  2. Select the appropriate project from the drop down menu at the top left

  3. On the Project tab -> Compute tab -> Images category

  4. Click Create Image

  5. The Create An Image dialog box appears

  6. Enter the following values:

    Property

    Description

    Image Name

    Enter a name for the image

    Image Description

    Enter a description of the image

    Image Source

    Browse the image source

    Format

    Select the image format (E.g. QCOW2) for the image

    Architecture

    Specify the architecture. E.g. i386 for a 32-bit/x86_64 for a 64-bit

    Minimum Disk (GB)

    Leave this field empty

    Minimum RAM (MB)

    Leave this field empty

    Protected

    Select if only users with permissions can delete the image - Yes/No

Doing the same with CLI

The simplest way to obtain a virtual machine image that works with OpenStack is to download one of offical images. We recommend using the images in qcow2 format.

$ openstack image create --disk-format qcow2 --public --file ./cirros-x86_64-disk.img DemoImage

$ openstack image list
+--------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------+
| ID                                   | Name                | Status      |
+--------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------+
| 6520eb21-09b6-4745-d905-7779ac579af8 | DemoImage           | active      |
| cbd76177-c79b-490f-9a7f-59f9eed3412e | Debian Jessie 8     | active      |
| d175564a-156e-41c7-b2a3-fd8b018e9e11 | Outdated (Ubuntu)   | deactivated |
| 484e5754-f4f7-409c-8ba1-454e422816b4 | Outdated (Ubuntu)   | deactivated |
| fecf1f4d-e36d-44fe-94de-4eae707b40aa | Outdated (Ubuntu)   | deactivated |
| 6f24613b-4f98-4caa-9bc6-0294f4c67fac | Outdated (Fedora)   | deactivated |
| ceb6ff80-24de-460a-9ecc-85f3283aa98e | Outdated (Debian)   | deactivated |
| d241a2b5-cd1d-4812-8d59-2ccfb1acbf88 | CentOS 7            | active      |
+--------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------+

Useful image properties

When uploading custom images, there are a couple of properties you can set that provide additional benefits, more than 28 drives to a vm, different topology, larger than 2TB boot volumes, etc. The ones we recommend setting are;

hw_disk_bus: scsi
hw_scsi_model: virtio-scsi
hw_qemu_guest_agent: yes

You can set these whilst creating the image by using the --property key=value parameter like so;

$ openstack image create --disk-format qcow2 --file fedora-coreos-34.20210919.3.0-openstack.x86_64.qcow2 \
      --property hw_disk_bus=scsi --property hw_scsi_model=virtio-scsi --property hw_qemu_guest_agent=yes \
      fedora-coreos-34.20210919.3.0-openstack.x86_64

You can also set or alter properties on an existing image using the same --property key=value parameter like this;

$ openstack image set --property hw_machine_type=q35 --property hw_video_model=virtio cirros-0.5.2-x86_64-disk

Below are some additional properties you can experiment with, mind you that not all images support all properties. Their default values are on the left, suggested values to the right. hw_machine_type is finicky on older images. hw_firmware_type will currently only work on images that support secureboot.

+--------------------------------------------+
| Property            | Default  | Suggested |
+---------------------+----------+-----------+
| hw_machine_type:    | pc       | q35       |
| hw_firmware_type:   | bios     | uefi      |
| hw_video_model:     | cirrus   | virtio    |
| hw_watchdog_action: | disabled | reset     |
+--------------------------------------------+

You can read more about image properties here; https://docs.openstack.org/glance/latest/admin/useful-image-properties.html