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Images are the disk templates nodes boot from. SFC provides base images with common configurations. You can also upload your own custom images.

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Image requirements

SFC supports UEFI amd64 (x86_64) raw images. We do not support qcow2. Custom images should resize themselves to the full disk size during the boot process to make use of the full disk space available to the node. For an example of how to build an SFC compatible image with packer, see our example Github repository. All custom images must have drivers for both and for networking. All custom images must have cloud-init installed and the networking configuration step must be enabled in order for networking to be set up.

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Image fields

Images have three key fields:
  • id — The unique identifier like image_abc123
  • name — A human-readable name like ubuntu-22.04-cuda-12.4 or training-base
  • provider — Either sfc for SFC-provided base images or custom for images you upload

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Uploading an image

Upload a raw disk image with sf images upload. The CLI handles multipart upload with progress tracking and SHA256 integrity verification. The maximum image size is 75 GiB. 
sf images upload \
  --name ubuntu-jammy-custom \
  --file output/ubuntu_jammy.img
For large images, increase upload concurrency to speed things up. 
sf images upload \
  --name ubuntu-jammy-custom \
  --file output/ubuntu_jammy.img \
  --concurrency 4
If you omit --file or --name, the CLI will prompt you interactively. Custom images are scoped to your account. Run sf images ls to see all images available to you, including SFC’s public images. 
sf images ls

NAME                      VISIBILITY  STATUS     CREATED
ubuntu-22.04.5-cuda-12.7  public      completed  Feb 23, 6:50pm
ubuntu-jammy-custom       private     completed  Mar 27, 2:00pm

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Using an image

Pass an image name or ID when creating a node. 
sf nodes create --capacity dev --image ubuntu-jammy-custom
If you omit --image, the CLI will present an interactive picker showing all completed images available to you.

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Deleting an image

sf images delete ubuntu-jammy-custom