Skip to main content

Templates & Cloud Images

ProxCenter simplifies VM provisioning by managing cloud images and VM templates. Download official cloud images from Linux distributions, convert them into Proxmox templates, and deploy new VMs from those templates with cloud-init configuration.

Overview​

Instead of manually downloading cloud images, uploading them to Proxmox storage, and configuring template VMs by hand, ProxCenter provides a streamlined workflow:

  1. Browse a catalog of available cloud images
  2. Download the image to your Proxmox storage
  3. Create a template VM with the appropriate settings
  4. Deploy new VMs from the template with cloud-init customization

Cloud Image Catalog​

ProxCenter maintains a catalog of cloud images from popular distributions:

  • Ubuntu -- Server cloud images (22.04 LTS, 24.04 LTS, etc.)
  • Debian -- Generic cloud images
  • Rocky Linux / AlmaLinux -- RHEL-compatible cloud images
  • Fedora -- Cloud base images

The catalog shows the image name, version, architecture, format, and size. Images are downloaded directly from the distribution's official mirrors.

Downloading Images​

Select an image from the catalog and choose the target Proxmox node and storage. ProxCenter downloads the image and stores it in the ISO/template storage. Progress is shown in real time.

tip

Download images to a shared storage (NFS, Ceph, etc.) to make them available across all nodes in a cluster without downloading multiple copies.

Creating Templates​

After downloading a cloud image, you can create a Proxmox VM template from it:

  1. Select the downloaded image
  2. Configure the template settings:
    • CPU -- Number of cores and CPU type
    • Memory -- RAM allocation
    • Disk -- Resize the cloud image disk if needed
    • Network -- Bridge and VLAN configuration
    • Cloud-Init -- Default user, SSH keys, DNS settings
  3. ProxCenter creates the VM, imports the cloud image as the boot disk, enables cloud-init, and converts it to a template

Deploying from Templates​

To deploy a new VM from a template:

  1. Select the template
  2. Choose the target node (can be different from where the template lives if using shared storage)
  3. Configure instance-specific settings:
    • Hostname
    • IP address (static or DHCP)
    • SSH public keys
    • User and password
  4. ProxCenter clones the template and applies the cloud-init configuration

The new VM is ready to start immediately after cloning.

Managing Templates​

The Templates page lists all VM templates across your connected Proxmox instances. For each template, you can see:

  • Which node and storage it resides on
  • The base OS and image version
  • How many VMs have been deployed from it
  • When it was last updated
Enterprise Feature

The Templates & Cloud Images feature is available in the Enterprise edition.

Permissions​

PermissionDescription
vm.createRequired to create templates and deploy VMs
storage.writeRequired to download and store cloud images