About images
What images are in Akasha, where they come from, and how they relate to projects.
Every instance in Akasha starts from an image. An image bundles an operating system and its metadata — type (container or VM), architecture, and optional aliases — so you can launch identical instances repeatedly.
Image sources
Akasha instances can be created from two main sources:
- The public image catalog — a large set of ready-to-use Linux distributions, each in container and/or virtual-machine variants and for multiple architectures. You browse the catalog directly from the create-instance flow. Catalog availability is deployment-dependent: in air-gapped environments the catalog may be unreachable, in which case you see only your project's local images — ask your administrator if expected images are missing.
- Project-local images — images that live in your project. These appear when you launch an instance from the catalog (the downloaded image is cached locally), when you create an image from an instance or snapshot, or when you upload an image file. Manage them on the Images page.
In addition, OCI application images let you run an application container straight from an OCI registry (for example, a public container registry). Instances created this way display as type Container (App) in the console. See Use images for how to select each source.
Container and VM images
Images target a specific instance type. Container images produce system containers; VM images produce virtual machines. Some images support only one type — for example, desktop variants are VM-only — and selecting such an image locks the instance type accordingly during creation. Images are also architecture-specific, and the console only offers architectures your deployment supports.
Images and projects
Images belong to a project. The Images page lists the images in the currently selected project, and instances you create in a project use that project's images.
Depending on how your project was created, images may instead be shared with the platform's default project: projects can be configured with isolated or shared image storage (a project feature set at creation time). If your project shares images, you see — and can use — the shared image set. See About projects for project features and isolation.
Storage
Images are stored on a storage pool in your deployment and consume pool capacity. Deleting images you no longer need frees that space; see Manage images.
For installing a VM from vendor installer media instead of a prebuilt image, use a custom ISO — see Custom ISOs.