Downloading System Images

A system image is effectively a file containing the entire filesystem of a virtual system, either in tar.gz or EXT3 format. When a virtual system is created by Cloudmin, it can use an image as the basis of the system's filesystem, rather than needing to download and install packages, or copy files from the host system.

Cloudmin customers have access to system images for a variety of operating systems and virtualization types, but by default none are included when it is installed. To download images that you can use to create systems, do the following :

1. On the left menu under Cloudmin Settings click on New System Images.
2. A page listing all available images will be displayed. Choose the ones you want based on the virtualization technology you prefer (such as Xen or Zones), and the Linux distribution that will run in the image.
3. Check the boxes next to the ones you want to use, and click the Download Selected Images button.
4. Depending on the speed of your network connection and the total size of those you choose, images may take minutes or hours to download. The progress of each download will be displayed.

You can now create virtual systems using the selected images, assuming that one or more host systems of the corresponding virtualization type have been registered.

If you are using Solaris Zones, only images for the architecture that matches the physical Solaris host systems will work. For Xen or VServers, I recommend selecting images of the same type as your host systems, just to keep management easier.

Some images include the full Virtualmin stack, such as Webmin, Apache, Postfix, BIND, MySQL, ProFTPd and so on. If you plan to create virtual systems for web hosting, we recommend using these images rather than manually installing Virtualmin on created systems - even though Cloudmin is capable of doing this for you.

Cloudmin does not limit you to provided images - once you have some virtual systems running, you can create your own, as documented on the Making Your Own Images page.