Proxmox Cloud Image Template¶

About Cloud Images¶

Cloud images are operating system templates and every instance starts out as an identical clone of every other instance. It is the user data that gives every cloud instance its personality and cloud-init is the tool that applies user data to your instances automatically.

Advantage of Cloud Image Template¶

• Predefined SSH keys
• Predefined user account
• Predefined network configuration
• VM creation time is under few minutes
• No installation process required like with ISO images
• First boot always updated with latest updates

Ubuntu Cloud Images¶

Ubuntu provides official cloud images you can find the proper image for your needs at cloud-images.ubuntu.com.

In this tutorial we will be using Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat cloud image.

Create Cloud Image Template¶

SSH to you Proxmox server.

Download the cloud image template from the official website.

wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/noble/current/noble-server-cloudimg-amd64.img

In order to create a cloud image template first of all we need to create a new VM. After we will configure it we will create a Template from it.

The following parameters will predefine our Base Template

Command parameters description:

• 9000: VM ID in Proxmox. I prefer to use high number for management purposes.
• memory: VM's memory in MB.
• core: Number of CPU cores for the VM.
• name: Name of the VM and the template.
• net0: Network interface for the VM.
• bridge: Network bridge for the VM.
• agent: Enable or disable QEMU agent support.
• onboot: Enable or disable VM start on boot.

Create a new virtual machine.

qm create 9000 --memory 2048 --core 2 --name ubuntu-24.04-cloud --net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0 --agent enabled=1 --onboot 1

The default storage Proxmox creates for vm is storage1. In my case I use different storage for vm's and templates named storage1.
The following commands will utilize the storage1 storage. Change the storage name for your Proxmox server.

Import the downloaded Ubuntu Cloud Image we downloaded before disk to the storage.

qm importdisk 9000 noble-server-cloudimg-amd64.img storage1

Attach the new disk to the vm as a scsi drive on the scsi controller

qm set 9000 --scsihw virtio-scsi-pci --scsi0 storage1:vm-9000-disk-0

Add cloud init drive

qm set 9000 --ide2 storage1:cloudinit

Make the cloud init drive bootable and restrict BIOS to boot from disk only

qm set 9000 --boot c --bootdisk scsi0

Add serial console

qm set 9000 --serial0 socket --vga serial0

Now had to the Proxmox web interface. Select the new vm and Cloud-Init tab.

Configure the default setting for the cloud image template. This will allow the VM to start with predefined user, password, ssh keys and network configuration.

At this point we configured the VM and we can create a cloud image template from it.

Create a new cloud image template.

qm template 9000

Now you can use the Cloud Image Template to create new vm instances.
You can do it from the Proxmox web interface or from the command line.

Cli example:

qm clone 9000 122 --name my-new-vm --full

VM's Storage¶

Since we are using a minimal cloud image template. Cloned VM's will use the same storage as the template which is about 2GB of disk space.

You can utilize an automated script to to expand the disk space of the cloned VM: VM Disk Expander

Troubleshooting¶

Reseting VM's machine-id¶

Run the following command inside the VM to reset the machine-id.

sudo rm -f /etc/machine-id
sudo rm -f /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

Shutdown the VM. Then power it back on. The machine-id will be regenerated.

If the machine-id is not regenerated you can try to fix it by running the following command.

sudo systemd-machine-id-setup

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