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DigitalOcean MicroVMs run a container image in its own lightweight virtual machine and serve it over an authenticated HTTPS endpoint. This quickstart uses doctl to create a MicroVM that runs nginx, send it a request, run a command in it, and destroy it.

Prerequisites

• Install doctl v1.173.0 or later, and authenticate it with a personal access token. If you use a custom-scoped token, grant it the microvm scopes listed in Access Tokens and Scopes.
• Create a separate personal access token with only the microvm:access scope, and export it as the DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN environment variable so you can send requests to the MicroVM’s endpoint with curl. Use this token only for endpoint requests.

Create a MicroVM

Create a MicroVM in MKC1 that runs the public nginx image with 1 vCPU and 2 GiB of memory. nginx serves HTTP on port 80, so set --http-port to 80:

doctl compute microvm create example-microvm \
  --oci-ref docker.io/library/nginx:latest \
  --region mkc1 \
  --cpu 1 \
  --memory 2048 \
  --http-port 80

The output includes the new MicroVM’s ID. The MicroVM’s state is creating until provisioning finishes. Check its state, replacing <your-microvm-id> with the MicroVM’s ID:

doctl compute microvm get <your-microvm-id>

When the state is running, the Endpoint column shows the MicroVM’s hostname.

Send a Request to the MicroVM

Every request to a MicroVM’s endpoint needs a DigitalOcean API token in the Authorization header. Send a request to the nginx default page:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" \
  "https://<your-microvm-id>.mkc1.microvm.ondigitalocean.com"

The response is the nginx welcome page. After 5 minutes with no traffic, the MicroVM pauses. The next request resumes it automatically.

Run a Command in the MicroVM

Run nginx -v inside the MicroVM’s container. Put -- before the command so doctl does not read the command’s flags as its own:

doctl compute microvm exec <your-microvm-id> -- nginx -v

Destroy the MicroVM

Destroy the MicroVM to delete it and the data on its disk:

doctl compute microvm delete <your-microvm-id>

The command prompts for confirmation. To skip the prompt, add --force.

Next Steps

• To use the Control Panel or the API instead of doctl, see How to Create a MicroVM.
• To capture a warmed-up MicroVM and start new MicroVMs from that state, see How to Checkpoint a MicroVM.
• To understand when MicroVMs pause, resume, and incur charges, see MicroVM Lifecycle.