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Instance API

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Introduction

Scaleway Instances are virtual machines in the cloud. Different Instance types offer different technical specifications in terms of vCPU, RAM, bandwidth and storage. Once you have created your Instance and installed your image of choice (e.g. an operating system), you can connect to your Instance via SSH to use it as you wish. When you are done using the Instance, you can delete it from your account.

Tip:

To retrieve information about the different images available to install on Scaleway Instances, check out our Marketplace API.

Concepts

Refer to our dedicated concepts page to find definitions of all concepts and terminology related to Instances.

Quickstart

  1. Configure your environment variables

    Note:

    This is an optional step that seeks to simplify your usage of the Instances API. See Availability Zones below for help choosing an Availability Zone. You can find your Project ID in the Scaleway console.

    export SCW_SECRET_KEY="<API secret key>"
    export SCW_DEFAULT_ZONE="<Scaleway Availability Zone>"
    export SCW_PROJECT_ID="<Scaleway Project ID>"

  2. Create an Instance: Run the following command to create an Instance. You can customize the details in the payload (name, description, type, tags etc) to your needs: use the information below to adjust the payload as necessary.

    curl -X POST \
      -H "X-Auth-Token: $SCW_SECRET_KEY" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      "https://api.scaleway.com/instance/v1/zones/$SCW_DEFAULT_ZONE/servers" \
        -d '{
          "name": "my-new-instance", 
          "project": "'"$SCW_PROJECT_ID"'",
          "commercial_type": "GP1-S", 
          "image": "544f0add-626b-4e4f-8a96-79fa4414d99a",
          "enable_ipv6": true,
          "volumes": {
            "0":{
              "name": "my-volume",
              "size": 300000000000,
              "volume_type": "l_ssd"
            }
          }
        }'
    ParameterDescriptionValid values
    nameA name of your choice for the Instance (string)Any string containing only alphanumeric characters, dots, spaces and dashes, e.g. "my-new-instance".
    projectThe Project in which the Instance should be created (string)Any valid Scaleway Project ID (see above), e.g. "b4bd99e0-b389-11ed-afa1-0242ac120002"
    commercial-typeThe commercial Instance type to create (string)Any valid ID of a Scaleway commercial Instance type, e.g. "GP1-S", "PRO2-M". Use the List Instance Types endpoint to get a list of all valid Instance types and their IDs.
    imageThe image to install on the Instance, e.g. a particular OS (string)Any valid Scaleway image ID, e.g. "544f0add-626b-4e4f-8a96-79fa4414d99a" which is the ID for the Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish image. Use the List Instance Images endpoint to get a list of all available images and their IDs, or check out the Scaleway Marketplace API.
    enable_ipv6Whether to enable IPv6 on the Instance (boolean)true or false
    volumesAn object that specifies the storage volumes to attach to the Instance. For more information, see Creating an Instance: the volumes object in the Technical information section of this quickstart.A (dictionary) object with a minimum of one key ("0") whose value is another object containing the parameters "name" (a name for the volume), "size" (the size for the volume, in bytes), and "volume_type" ("l_ssd", "b_ssd" or "unified"). Additional keys for additional volumes should increment by 1 each time (the second volume would have a key of 1.) Further parameters are available, and it is possible to attach existing volumes rather than creating a new one, or create a volume from a snapshot.

  3. List your Instances: run the following command to get a list of all the Instances in your account, with their details:

    curl -X GET \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -H "X-Auth-Token: $SCW_SECRET_KEY" \
      "https://api.scaleway.com/instance/v1/zones/$SCW_DEFAULT_ZONE/servers/"

  4. Delete an Instance: run the following command to delete an Instance, specified by its Instance ID:

    curl -X DELETE \
      -H "X-Auth-Token: $SCW_SECRET_KEY" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      "https://api.scaleway.com/instance/v1/zones/$SCW_DEFAULT_ZONE/servers/<Instance-ID>"

    The expected successful response is empty.

Requirements:

Technical information

Availability Zones

Instances can be deployed in the following Availability Zones:

NameAPI ID
Parisfr-par-1 fr-par-2 fr-par-3
Amsterdamnl-ams-1 nl-ams-2
Warsawpl-waw-1 pl-waw-2

Pagination

Most listing requests receive a paginated response. Requests against paginated endpoints accept two query arguments:

  • page, a positive integer to choose which page to return.
  • per_page, an positive integer lower or equal to 100 to select the number of items to return per page. The default value is 50.

Paginated endpoints usually also accept filters to search and sort results.These filters are documented along each endpoint documentation.

The X-Total-Count header contains the total number of items returned.

Creating an Instance: the volumes object

When creating an Instance, the volumes object is a required part of the payload. This is a dictionary with a minimum of one key ("0") whose value is another object setting parameters for that volume. Additional keys for additional volumes should increment by 1 each time (the second volume would have a key of 1.)

Note that volume size must respect the volume constraints of the Instance's commercial_type: for each type of Instance, a minimum amount of storage is required, and there is also a maximum that cannot be exceeded. Some Instance types support only Block Storage (b_ssd), others also support local storage (l_ssd) ). Read more about these constraints in the List Instance types documentation, specifically the volume_constraints parameter for each type listed in the response

You can use the volumes object in different ways. The table below shows which parameters are required for each of the following use cases:

Use caseRequired paramsOptional paramsNotes
Create a volume from a snapshot of an imagevolume_type, size, bootIf the size parameter is not set, the size of the volume will equal the size of the corresponding snapshot of the image.
Attach an existing volumeid, nameboot
Create an empty volumename, volume_type, sizeorganization, project, boot
Create a volume from a snapshotbase_snapshot, name, volume_typeorganization, project, boot
Note:

This information is designed to help you correctly configure the volumes object when using the Create an Instance or Update an Instance methods.

Going further

For more help using Scaleway Instances, check out the following resources:

Instances

Instances are computing units providing resources to run your applications on. Scaleway offers various Instance types including Virtual Instances and dedicated GPU Instances. Note: Instances can be referenced as "servers" in API endpoints.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/action
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/action

Images

Images are backups of your Instances. One image will contain all of the volumes of your Instance, and can be used to restore your Instance and its data. You can also use it to create a series of Instances with a predefined configuration. To copy not all but only one specified volume of an Instance, you can use the snapshot feature instead.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/images
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/images
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/images/{id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/images/{image_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/images/{image_id}

Security Groups

A security group is a set of firewall rules on a set of Instances. Security groups enable you to create rules that either drop or allow incoming traffic from certain ports of your Instances.

Security groups are stateful by default which means return traffic is automatically allowed, regardless of any rules. As a contrary, you have to switch in a stateless mode to define explicitly allowed.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}/rules
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}/rules
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}/rules
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}/rules/{security_group_rule_id}
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}/rules/{security_group_rule_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/{security_group_id}/rules/{security_group_rule_id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/security_groups/default/rules

User Data

User data is a key value store API you can use to provide data to your Instance without authentication.

As an example of use, Scaleway images contain the script scw-generate-ssh-keys which generates SSH server’s host keys then stores their fingerprints as user data under the key “ssh-host-fingerprints”. This way, we ensure they are really connecting to their Scaleway Instance and they are not victim of a man-in-the-middle attack.

There are two endpoints to access user data:

  • From a running Instance, by using the metadata API at http://169.254.42.42/user_data. To enhance security, we only allow user data viewing and editing as root. To know if the query is issued by the root user, we only accept queries made from a local port below 1024 (by default, non-root users can not bind ports below 1024). To specify the local port with cURL, use curl --local-port 1-1024 http://169.254.42.42/user_data
  • From the Instance API at using methods described bellow.
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/user_data
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/user_data/{key}
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/user_data/{key}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/user_data/{key}

Instance Types

All Instance types available in a specified zone. Each type contains all the features of the Instance (CPU, RAM, Storage) as well as their associated pricing.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/products/servers
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/products/servers/availability

Volume Types

All volume types available in a specified zone. Each of these types will contains all the capabilities and constraints of the volume (min size, max size, snapshot).

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/products/volumes

IPs

A flexible IP address is an IP address which you hold independently of any Instance. You can attach it to any of your Instances and do live migration of the IP address between your Instances.

Note that attaching a flexible IP address to an Instance removes its previous public IP and interrupts any ongoing public connection to the Instance. This does not apply if you have migrated your server to the new Network stack and have at least one flexible IP attached to the Instance.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/ips
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/ips
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/ips/{ip}
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/ips/{ip}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/ips/{ip}

Volumes

A volume is where you store your data inside your Instance. It appears as a block device on Linux that you can use to create a filesystem and mount it.

Two different types of volume (volume_type) are available:

  • l_ssd is a local block storage: your data is downloaded on the hypervisor and you need to power off your Instance to attach or detach a volume.
  • b_ssd is a remote block storage: your data is stored on a centralized cluster. You can plug and unplug a volume while your Instance is running.

Note: The unified volume type is not available for volumes. This type can only be used on snapshots.

Minimum and maximum volume sizes for each volume types can be queried from the zone /products/volumes API endpoint. I.e for:

Each type of volume is also subject to a global quota for the sum of all the volumes. This quota depends of the level of support and may be changed on demand.

Be wary that when terminating an Instance, if you want to keep your block storage volume, you must detach it before you issue the terminate call.

When using multiple block devices, it's advised to mount them by using their UUID instead of their device name. A device name is subject to change depending on the volumes order. Block devices UUIDs can be found in /dev/disk/by-id/.

POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/block-migration/apply
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/block-migration/plan
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/volumes
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/volumes
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/volumes/{id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/volumes/{volume_id}
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/volumes/{volume_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/volumes/{volume_id}

Snapshots

Snapshots contain the data of a specified volume at a particular point in time. The data can include the Instance's operating system, configuration information and/or files stored on the volume.

A snapshot can be done from a specified volume, e.g. you have one Instance with a volume containing the OS and another one containing the application data, and you want to use different snapshot strategies on both volumes.

A snapshot's volume type can be either its original volume's type (l_ssd or b_ssd) or unified. Similarly, volumes can be created as well from snapshots of their own type or unified. Therefore, to migrate data from a l_ssd volume to a b_ssd volume, one can create a unified snapshot from the original volume and a new b_ssd volume from this snapshot. The newly created volume will hold a copy of the data of the original volume.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/snapshots
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/snapshots
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/snapshots/{snapshot_id}
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/snapshots/{snapshot_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/snapshots/{snapshot_id}
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/snapshots/{snapshot_id}/export

Bootscripts

Bootscripts are a combination of a Kernel and of an initrd. They tell the Instance how to start and configure its starting process and settings.

Bootscripts usage is now deprecated.

Scaleway recommends you take the "local" boot method that automatically launches your Instance with your locally installed kernel. It gives you full control over the booting process of your Instance.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/bootscripts
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/bootscripts/{bootscript_id}

Placement Groups

Placement groups allow the user to express a preference regarding the physical position of a group of Instances. The feature lets the user choose to either group Instances on the same physical hardware for best network throughput and low latency or to spread Instances across physically distanced hardware to reduce the risk of physical failure.

The operating mode is selected by a policy_type. Two policy types are available:

  • low_latency will group Instances on the same hypervisors
  • max_availability will spread Instances across physically distanced hypervisors

The policy_type is set to max_availability by default.

For each policy types, one of the two policy_mode may be selected:

  • optional will start your Instances even if the constraint is not respected
  • enforced guarantees that if the Instance starts, the constraint is respected

The policy_mode is set by default to optional.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}/servers
PUT
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}/servers
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/placement_groups/{placement_group_id}/servers

Private NICs

A Private NIC is the network interface that connects an Instance to a Private Network. An Instance can have multiple private NICs at the same time, but each NIC must belong to a different Private Network.

GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/private_nics
POST
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/private_nics
GET
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/private_nics/{private_nic_id}
PATCH
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/private_nics/{private_nic_id}
DELETE
/instance/v1/zones/{zone}/servers/{server_id}/private_nics/{private_nic_id}