Images and templates

A classic VM boots from a cloud image: a prepared Linux disk image with cloud-init inside. Virtainer Lite keeps a local cache of those images and copies from the cache every time you create a VM.

Images

The Images page under Virtual machines lists what this host has cached. There are two ways to add one:

• From the image catalog. Browse the published Linux cloud images and pull the one you want. The host downloads it once and verifies its checksum.
• Upload your own. Point the host at a qcow2 image you already have.

Once an image is cached, creating a VM from it does not touch the network.

Images are copied, never shared

Creating a VM makes a full private copy of the cached image. There is no chain back to the original, so the cached image is never modified, and deleting a cached image cannot damage a VM that was built from it.

Each VM’s disk is a full copy, so plan pool capacity by the number of VMs, not by the number of distinct images.

Templates

A template is a saved set of cloud-init settings: the user account, SSH keys, the packages and commands that should run on first boot. Templates let you stop retyping the same first-boot configuration for every VM.

1. Open Templates under Virtual machines and create one.
2. Fill in the first-boot settings you want to reuse.
3. Pick that template when you create a VM, and adjust anything per machine.

A template is applied at creation time. Editing a template later does not reach back into machines that were already created from it.

Raw cloud-config

If the form does not cover what you need, a template can carry your own #cloud-config document, which is appended to the configuration Virtainer Lite generates. Use it for the parts that are genuinely yours; let the form handle hostname, users, and networking so the console and the guest agree on what was set.