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Creating a VM from a public image

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Updated at February 12, 2025

To create a VM:

  1. In the management console, select the folder where you want to create your VM.

  2. Select Compute Cloud from the list of services.

  3. In the left-hand panel, select Virtual machines.

  4. Click Create virtual machine.

  5. Under Boot disk image, select a public image with the software you want to use.

  6. Under Location, select an availability zone for your VM.

  7. Optionally, configure the boot disk under Disks and file storages:

    • Select the disk type.
    • Specify the required disk size.

  8. Optionally, add a secondary disk:

    • Under Disks and file storages, click Add.

    • In the window that opens, select Disk. You can select an existing disk or create a new one, either empty or from a snapshot or image.

      For example, to create a new empty disk:

      • Select Create new disk.
      • In the Contents field, select Empty.
      • Enter a name for the disk.
      • Select the disk type.
      • Specify the required disk and block size.
      • Optionally, enable Additional in the Delete along with the virtual machine field if you need this disk automatically deleted when deleting the VM.
      • Click Add disk.

  9. Optionally, connect a file storage:

    • Under Disks and file storages, click Add.

      • In the window that opens, select File storage and choose the storage you want to connect from the list.

      • Click Add file storage.

  10. Under Computing resources, select one of the preset configurations or create a custom one. To create a custom configuration:

    Note

    Each public image has specific minimum system requirements that a VM must meet. For example, a GitLab image from Yandex Cloud Marketplace requires at least 4 virtual cores and 8 GB of RAM.

  11. Under Network settings:

    • In the Subnet field, enter the ID of a subnet in the new VM’s availability zone. Alternatively, you can select a cloud network from the list.

      • Each network must have at least one subnet. If your network has no subnets, create one by selecting Create subnet.

      • If there are no networks in the list, click Create network to create one:

        • In the window that opens, specify the network name and select the folder where you want to create it.
        • Optionally, select Create subnets to automatically create subnets in all availability zones.
        • Click Create network.

    • In the Public IP address field, select a method for assigning an IP address:

      • Auto: To assign a random IP address from the Yandex Cloud IP address pool. In this case, you can enable DDoS protection using the option below.
      • List: To select a public IP address from the list of previously reserved static addresses. For more information, see Converting a dynamic public IP address to static.
      • No address: Not to assign a public IP address.

    • Select the relevant security groups. If you leave this field empty, the default security group will be assigned to the VM.

    • Expand Additional and select a method for assigning internal addresses in the Internal IPv4 address field:

      • Auto: To assign a random IP address from the pool of IP addresses available in the selected subnet.
      • Manual: To manually assign a private IP address to the VM.
      • Enable DDoS protection, if required. The option is available if you previously selected the automatic IP assignment method in the public address settings.

    • Optionally, create records for your VM in the DNS zone:

      • Expand DNS settings for internal addresses and click Add record.
      • Specify a zone, FQDN, and TTL for the record. When setting the FQDN, you can enable Detect automatically for the zone.
        You can add multiple records to internal DNS zones. For more information, see Cloud DNS integration with Compute Cloud.
      • To create another record, click Add record.

    If you want to add another network interface to your VM, click Add network interface and repeat the settings from this step for the new interface. You can add up to eight network interfaces to a single VM.

  12. Under Access:

    • Select Access by OS Login to connect and manage access to the new VM using OS Login in Yandex Cloud Organization.

      With OS Login, you can connect to VMs using SSH keys and SSH certificates via a standard SSH client or the Yandex Cloud CLI. OS Login enables rotating the SSH keys used to access VMs, providing the most secure access option.

    • If you prefer not to use OS Login, select SSH key and specify the following VM access data:

      • Under Login, enter a username.

        Alert

        Do not use root or other usernames reserved by the OS. To perform operations requiring superuser privileges, use the sudo command.

      • In the SSH key field, select the SSH key saved in your organization user profile.

        If there are no saved SSH keys in your profile, or you want to add a new key:

        • Click Add key.
        • Enter a name for the SSH key.
        • Upload or paste the contents of the public key file. You need to create a key pair for the SSH connection to a VM yourself.
        • Click Add.

        The SSH key will be added to your organization user profile.

        If users cannot add SSH keys to their profiles in the organization, the added public SSH key will only be saved to the user profile of the VM being created.

    If you want to add multiple users with SSH keys to the VM at the same time, specify these users' data under Metadata. You can also use metadata to install additional software on a VM when creating it.

    In public Linux images provided by Yandex Cloud, the functionality of connecting over SSH using login and password is disabled by default.

    Note

    On VMs with OS Login access enabled, provide your custom SSH keys through metadata.

  13. Under General information, enter a name for your VM:

    • It must be 2 to 63 characters long.
    • It may contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
    • It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.

    Note

    The VM name is used to generate an internal FQDN, which is set only once, when you create the VM. If the internal FQDN is important to you, make sure to choose an appropriate name for your VM.

  14. Under Additional:

  15. Click Create VM.

It takes a few minutes to create a VM. When the VM status changes to RUNNING, proceed to configure the software. To monitor VM statuses, check the list of VMs in the folder.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, install and initialize it.

The folder specified in the CLI profile is used by default. You can specify a different folder through the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

  1. See the description of the CLI command for creating a VM:

    yc compute instance create --help

  2. Prepare a key pair (public and private keys) for SSH access to the VM.

  3. Select one of the Yandex Cloud Marketplace public images.

    You can also view image IDs in the management console when creating a VM or in Cloud Marketplace on the image page under Product IDs.

    To get a list of available images using the CLI, run this command:

    yc compute image list --folder-id standard-images

    Result:

    +----------------------+-------------------------------------+--------------------------+----------------------+--------+
|          ID          |                NAME                 |          FAMILY          |     PRODUCT IDS      | STATUS |
+----------------------+-------------------------------------+--------------------------+----------------------+--------+
...
| fdvk34al8k5n******** | centos-7-1549279494                 | centos-7                 | dqni65lfhvv2******** | READY  |
| fdv7ooobjfl3******** | windows-2016-gvlk-1548913814        | windows-2016-gvlk        | dqnnc72gj2is******** | READY  |
| fdv4f5kv5cvf******** | ubuntu-1604-lts-1549457823          | ubuntu-1604-lts          | dqnnb6dc7640******** | READY  |
...
+----------------------+-------------------------------------+--------------------------+----------------------+--------+

    Where:

    • ID: Image ID.

    • NAME: Image name.

    • FAMILY: ID of the image family the image belongs to.

    • PRODUCT IDS: IDs of Yandex Cloud Marketplace products associated with the image.

    • STATUS: Current status of the image. It may take one of the following values:

      • STATUS_UNSPECIFIED: Image status is not defined.
      • CREATING: Image is being created.
      • READY: Image is ready to use.
      • ERROR: You cannot use the image due to an issue.
      • DELETING: Image is being deleted.

  4. Select a subnet:

    yc vpc subnet list

    Result:

    +----------------------+---------------------------+----------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|          ID          |           NAME            |      NETWORK ID      | ROUTE TABLE ID |       ZONE        |      RANGE      |
+----------------------+---------------------------+----------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
| b0c6n43f9lgh******** | default-ru-central1-a     | enpe3m3fa00u******** |                | ru-central1-a     | [10.130.0.0/24] |
| e2l2da8a20b3******** | default-ru-central1-b     | enpe3m3fa00u******** |                | ru-central1-a     | [10.129.0.0/24] |
| e9bnlm18l70a******** | default-ru-central1-d     | enpe3m3fa00u******** |                | ru-central1-a     | [10.128.0.0/24] |
+----------------------+---------------------------+----------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+

  5. Create a VM in the default folder:

    yc compute instance create \
  --name first-instance \
  --zone ru-central1-a \
  --network-interface subnet-name=default-ru-central1-a,nat-ip-version=ipv4 \
  --create-boot-disk image-folder-id=standard-images,image-family=centos-7 \
  --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

    Where:

    • --name: VM name. The naming requirements are as follows:

      • It must be 2 to 63 characters long.
      • It may contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
      • It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.

      Note

      The VM name is used to generate an internal FQDN, which is set only once, when you create the VM. If the internal FQDN is important to you, make sure to choose an appropriate name for your VM.

    • --zone: Availability zone matching the selected subnet.

    • --network-interface: VM network interface settings:

      • subnet-name: Name of the selected subnet.
      • nat-ip-version=ipv4: Public IP address. To create a VM without a public IP address, omit this parameter.

      If you want to add multiple network interfaces to your VM, specify the --network-interface parameter as many times as you need. You can add up to eight network interfaces to a single VM.

    • --create-boot-disk: VM boot disk settings:

      • image-family: Image family, e.g., centos-7. This option allows you to install the latest version of the OS from the specified family.

    • --ssh-key: Path to the file with the public SSH key. The VM will automatically create a user named yc-user for this key.

      When creating a VM from a Yandex Cloud Marketplace public image, make sure to provide an SSH key, as SSH access with a username and password is disabled by default for such images.

      If you want to add multiple users with SSH keys to your VM at the same time, specify these users' data in the --metadata-from-file parameter.

All the resources you need will then be created in the specified folder. You can check the new resources and their settings using the management console or this CLI command:

yc compute instance list

When a VM is created, it is assigned an IP address and hostname (FQDN). This data can be used for SSH access.

You can make a public IP address static. For more information, see Making a VM public IP address static.

If you don't have Terraform, install it and configure the Yandex Cloud provider.

  1. In the configuration file, define the parameters of the resources you want to create:

    
resource "yandex_compute_disk" "boot-disk" {
  name     = "<disk_name>"
  type     = "<disk_type>"
  zone     = "<availability_zone>"
  size     = "<disk_size>"
  image_id = "<image_ID>"
}

resource "yandex_compute_instance" "linux-vm" {
  name        = "linux-vm"
  platform_id = "standard-v3"
  zone        = "<availability_zone>"

  resources {
    cores  = "<number_of_vCPUs>"
    memory = "<RAM_in_GB>"
  }

  boot_disk {
    disk_id = yandex_compute_disk.boot-disk.id
  }

  network_interface {
    subnet_id = yandex_vpc_subnet.subnet-1.id
    nat       = true
  }

  metadata = {
    user-data = "#cloud-config\nusers:\n  - name: <username>\n    groups: sudo\n    shell: /bin/bash\n    sudo: 'ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL'\n    ssh_authorized_keys:\n      - ${file("<path_to_public_SSH_key>")}"
  }
}

resource "yandex_vpc_network" "network-1" {
  name = "network1"
}

resource "yandex_vpc_subnet" "subnet-1" {
  name           = "subnet1"
  zone           = "<availability_zone>"
  v4_cidr_blocks = ["192.168.10.0/24"]
  network_id     = yandex_vpc_network.network-1.id
}

    Where:

    • yandex_compute_disk: Boot disk description:

    • yandex_compute_instance: VM description:

      • name: VM name.

      • platform_id: Platform.

      • zone: Availability zone the VM will be in.

      • resources: Number of vCPUs and amount of RAM available to the VM. The values must match the selected platform.

      • boot_disk: Boot disk settings. Specify the disk ID.

      • network_interface: VM network interface settings. Specify the ID of the selected subnet. To automatically assign a public IP address to the VM, set nat = true.

        If you want to add multiple network interfaces to your VM, specify the network_interface section as many times as you need. You can add up to eight network interfaces to a single VM.

      • metadata: In the metadata, provide the username and public key for SSH access to the VM. For more information, see VM metadata.

        If you want to add multiple users with SSH keys to the VM at the same time, specify these users' data in a file and provide it under metadata.

    • yandex_vpc_network: Cloud network description.

    • yandex_vpc_subnet: Description of the subnet to connect your VM to.

    Note

    If you already have suitable resources, such as a cloud network and subnet, you do not need to redefine them. Specify their names and IDs in the appropriate parameters.

    For more information about the resources you can create with Terraform, see the relevant provider documentation.

  2. Make sure the configuration files are correct.

    1. In the command line, go to the directory where you created the configuration file.

    2. Run a check using this command:

      terraform plan

    If the configuration is correct, the terminal will display a list of resources to create and their parameters. If the configuration contains any errors, Terraform will point them out.

  3. Deploy the cloud resources.

    1. If the configuration does not contain any errors, run this command:

      terraform apply

    2. Confirm creating the resources: type yes in the terminal and press Enter.

    All the resources you need will then be created in the specified folder. You can check the new resources and their settings using the management console or this CLI command:

    yc compute instance list

When a VM is created, it is assigned an IP address and hostname (FQDN). This data can be used for SSH access.

You can make a public IP address static. For more information, see Making a VM public IP address static.

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