Custom Images Features
Validated on 25 Sep 2018 • Last edited on 8 May 2024
Custom images are Linux and Unix-like images you import to DigitalOcean. You can create Droplets based custom images, which lets you migrate and scale your workloads without spending time recreating your environment from scratch.
Once you upload a custom image to your DigitalOcean account, you can create Droplets based on that image. When you upload a custom image, you select a region for it to be available in. You can create Droplets based on a custom image in that region, and you can make your custom image available in additional regions at any time.
You can find cloud-friendly official Unix-like OS images on OpenStack or create your own with your preferred VM software.
Image Requirements
Images you upload to DigitalOcean must meet the following requirements:
-
Operating system. Images must have a Unix-like OS.
-
File format. Images must be in one of the following file formats:
- Raw (
.img
) with an MBR or GPT partition table - qcow2
- VHDX
- VDI
- VMDK
- Raw (
-
Size. Images must be 100 GB or less when uncompressed, including the filesystem.
-
Filesystem. Images must support the ext3 or ext4 filesystems.
-
cloud-init
. Images must have cloud-init 0.7.7 or higher, cloudbase-init, coreos-cloudinit, ignition, or bsd-cloudinit installed and configured correctly. If your image’s defaultcloud-init
configuration lists theNoCloud
data source before theConfigDrive
data source, Droplets created from your image will not function properly. -
SSH configuration. Images must have
sshd
installed and configured to run on boot. If your image does not havesshd
set up, you will not have SSH access to Droplets created from that image unless you recover access using the Recovery Console.
You can also upload a custom image that meets the above criteria as a compressed gzip or bzip2 file.