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OpenStack Virtual Machine Image Guide

OpenStack Virtual Machine Image Guide¶

Abstract¶

This guide describes how to obtain, create, and modify virtual machine images that are compatible with OpenStack.

Contents¶

  • Conventions
    • Notices
    • Command prompts
  • Introduction
    • Disk and container formats for images
    • Image metadata
    • Adding metadata to an image
    • Metadata definition (metadefs) service
  • Get images
    • AlmaLinux
    • Alpine Linux
    • Arch Linux
    • BSD: DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
    • CentOS
    • CirrOS (test)
    • Debian
    • Fedora
    • Kali Linux
    • Microsoft Windows
    • openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Rocky Linux
    • Ubuntu
  • Image requirements
    • Linux
    • Disk partitions and resize root partition on boot (cloud-init)
    • No hard-coded MAC address information
    • Ensure ssh server runs
    • Disable firewall
    • Access instance by using ssh public key (cloud-init)
    • Process user data and other metadata (cloud-init)
    • Ensure image writes boot log to console
    • Paravirtualized Xen support in the kernel (Xen hypervisor only)
    • Manage the image cache
  • Modify images
    • guestfish
    • guestmount
    • virt-* tools
    • Loop devices, kpartx, network block devices
  • Create images manually
    • Tools
    • Examples
  • Tools to automate image creation
    • OpenStack tools
    • External tools
  • Converting between image formats
    • qemu-img convert: raw, qcow2, qed, vdi, vmdk, vhd
    • VBoxManage: VDI (VirtualBox) to raw
  • Image sharing
    • Sharing an image
  • Appendix
    • Community support
    • Glossary
this page last updated: 2025-05-02 14:25:20
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Except where otherwise noted, this document is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See all OpenStack Legal Documents.

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Virtual Machine Image Guide

  • Conventions
  • Introduction
  • Get images
  • Image requirements
  • Modify images
  • Create images manually
  • Tools to automate image creation
  • Converting between image formats
  • Image sharing
  • Appendix

Page Contents

  • OpenStack Virtual Machine Image Guide
    • Abstract
    • Contents

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