Importing your own image into Compute

You can import an image file into Nebius AI Cloud, and create boot disks and virtual machines (VMs) based on your custom image. To make an import, upload an image file to a bucket in Object Storage and create an image in Compute.

Prerequisites

1. Make sure you are in a group that has at least the editor role within your tenant; for example, the default editors group. You can check this in the Administration → IAM section of the web console.

2. Prepare an image that meets the following requirements:

   • BIOS mode
   • AMD64 or ARM64 architecture
   • .vmdk, .vhd, .raw or .qcow2 format for the image file

   Only these requirements are supported.

How to import an image and create a boot disk and a VM

1. Create an Object Storage bucket.

   The bucket, image and VM should be in the same region.

2. Upload your image file to this bucket.

3. Create an image based on the uploaded file:

   Web console

   1. Copy the key of the file object:

      1. In the web console, go to  Storage → Object Storage.
      2. Open the bucket page.
      3. In the line of the uploaded object, click  → Copy key.

   2. Create the image in Nebius AI Cloud:

      1. In the web console, go to  Storage → Disks.

      2. Click Create resource → Image.

      3. In the window that opens, specify the name of your image.

      4. In the Source field, select Object Storage file.

      5. In the Object Storage file field, specify the copied object key.

         The value must meet the s3://<bucket>/<object> format. For example, s3://nebius-bucket-test/my-image-file.qcow2.

      6. Click Create image.

      The new image appears in the Images tab in  Storage → Disks.

   CLI

   nebius compute image create \
      --name <image_name> \
      --source-storage-bucket-name <bucket_name> \
      --source-storage-object-name <object_name>
   

   For example, if the object of the image file has the s3://nebius-bucket-test/my-image-file.qcow2 key:

   • --source-storage-bucket-name should be nebius-bucket-test
   • --source-storage-object-name should be my-image-file.qcow2

   By default, the AMD64 architecture is used for the image. If you want to use ARM64, add the --cpu-architecture arm64 parameter to the command above.

4. When the image is ready, create a boot disk with it.

5. Create a VM with the new boot disk.

6. (Optional) If you don’t need the image file in the bucket, delete it. The image in Compute won’t use it anymore.