Instance API

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.

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": "ubuntu_noble",
         "enable_ipv6": true,
         "volumes": {
           "0":{
             "size": 300000000000,
             "volume_type": "l_ssd"
           }
         }
       }'
   

   Parameter	Description	Valid values
   name	A name of your choice for the Instance (string)	Any string containing only alphanumeric characters, dots, spaces and dashes, e.g. "my-new-instance".
   project	The Project in which the Instance should be created (string)	Any valid Scaleway Project ID (see above), e.g. "b4bd99e0-b389-11ed-afa1-0242ac120002"
   commercial-type	The 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.
   image	The image to install on the Instance, e.g. a particular OS (string)	Any Scaleway image label, e.g. "ubuntu_noble", or any valid Scaleway image ID, e.g. "6fc0ade6-d6a3-4fb9-87ab-2444ac71e5c0" which is the ID for the Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat image. Use the List Instance Images endpoint to get a list of all available images with their IDs and labels, or check out the Scaleway Marketplace API.
   enable_ipv6	Whether to enable IPv6 on the Instance (boolean)	true or false
   volumes	An 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" or "b_ssd"). 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.

Technical information

Availability Zones

Instances can be deployed in the following Availability Zones:

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 using the Scaleway API, the volumes object is not strictly required. However, the defaults vary depending on certain conditions:

1. If an image label is used:

   • The default will be an sbs_volume volume.
   • The size of this volume will be the OS size (typically 10GB in most cases).

2. If an image ID from the marketplace is used (or any image based on a unified snapshot):

   • If the Instance supports local storage:
     • The default will be an l_ssd volume.
     • The size of this volume will be the instance's maximum local storage capacity.
   • If the Instance does not support local storage:
     • The default will be a b_ssd volume.
     • The size of this volume will be the OS size.

If you want to customize the storage configuration or add additional volumes, you will need to include the volumes object in your API request. This object should contain at least one (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" ("sbs_volume", "l_ssd" or "b_ssd"). 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. All Instance types support Block Storage (sbs_volume, b_ssd), some 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:

Going further

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

• Our main documentation
• The #instance channel on our Slack Community
• Our support ticketing system.