When you create a boot disk for a virtual machine, you need to choose an image for the disk.
Compute supports two types of boot disk images:
- Public images are provided and supported by the platform by default.
- Custom images are images that you create yourself with customized software and architecture.
Nebius AI Cloud provides public boot disk images for GPU and non-GPU VMs.
Compatibility types
The image that you choose for a VM must be compatible with the VM’s platform. There are different types of compatibility:
- Recommended images ensure stable VM performance.
- Alternative images are compatible with the platform but do not guarantee stable performance.
Image family
Each image has a family. When you use the Nebius AI Cloud CLI or the provider for Terraform to create a boot disk, you need to specify its family. For example, the image Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) has the family ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0.
How to get a list of available public images
To get a list of public boot disk images available in a region, run:
nebius compute image list-public --region <region>
recommended_platforms: Platforms for which the image is recommended.unsupported_platforms: Platforms for which the image is not supported (with reasons, if available).
Availability of images and their compatibility with platforms differ by region.
Images for GPU VMs
For VMs with GPUs, create boot disks from the following images:
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 12),
ubuntu24.04-cuda12
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13),
ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0
The ubuntu22.04-cuda12 image family is deprecated. Existing disks created from images in this family remain available, but creating new disks from this image family isn’t supported. Migrate to newer images.
| VM platform | Recommended images | Alternative images |
|---|
NVIDIA® B300 NVLink with Intel Granite Rapids gpu-b300-sxm | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | None |
NVIDIA® B200 NVLink with Intel Emerald Rapids gpu-b200-sxm | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | None |
NVIDIA® B200 NVLink with Intel Emerald Rapids gpu-b200-sxm-a | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | None |
NVIDIA® H200 NVLink with Intel Sapphire Rapids gpu-h200-sxm | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 12) ubuntu24.04-cuda12 |
NVIDIA® H100 NVLink with Intel Sapphire Rapids gpu-h100-sxm | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 12) ubuntu24.04-cuda12 |
NVIDIA® RTX PRO™ 6000 with Intel Granite Rapids gpu-rtx6000 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | None |
NVIDIA® L40S PCIe with Intel Ice Lake gpu-l40s-a | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 12) ubuntu24.04-cuda12 |
NVIDIA® L40S PCIe with AMD Epyc Genoa gpu-l40s-d | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 13) ubuntu24.04-cuda13.0 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for NVIDIA® GPUs (CUDA® 12) ubuntu24.04-cuda12 |
The 1gpu-20vcpu-224gb preset for NVIDIA® B200 platforms (gpu-b200-sxm and gpu-b200-sxm-a) requires driver version 580.x or newer. Earlier driver versions are not supported. GPU drivers and other components
The boot disk images for VMs with GPUs include the following components:
Images for non-GPU VMs
For VMs without GPUs, create boot disks from the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, ubuntu24.04-driverless image without GPU drivers and components.
The images without drivers are also compatible with GPU VMs, but you need to install the drivers and components manually. We recommend using the dedicated images for GPU VMs.
The following boot disk images are compatible with non-GPU VMs:
| VM platform | Recommended images | Alternative images |
|---|
Non-GPU AMD EPYC Genoa cpu-d3 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ubuntu24.04-driverless | None |
Non-GPU Intel Ice Lake cpu-e2 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ubuntu24.04-driverless | None |
The ubuntu22.04-driverless image family is deprecated. Existing disks created from images in this family remain available, but creating new disks from this image family isn’t supported. Migrate to newer images.
Security updates
Automatic security updates are disabled by default. We recommend that you check the compatibility of new library versions on a test VM, and then apply the updates manually to all running GPU nodes. If you do need automatic updates, you can enable them.
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