Supported Images¶
On ScienceCloud, you don't have to install the operating system when you start a new virtual machine. Instead, we provide bootable disks ready to use, so that within one minute you can login to your new instance. These are called images, and are basically files containing bootable virtual disks. We provide some basic images, but you can also create your own and upload it to the cloud.
Warning
Whenever you delete an instance, its root disk as well as ALL your customizations are removed. The base image, however, is never deleted.
Note that the image names below that being with three asterisks are the LATEST supported images. There may be other images available.
Table of supported images on the ScienceCloud¶
| Image Name | Default User | Image ID |
|---|---|---|
| ***Ubuntu 26.04 (2026-05-08) | ubuntu | 4e990ada-4efb-4021-b414-357af3773844 |
| ***Ubuntu 24.04 (2026-05-08) | ubuntu | a7b6cf57-335f-454a-be07-a5ae0b4d449a |
| ***Debian 13.4 (2026-05-08) | ubuntu | d359dee6-ab28-4fdf-ab12-c358fe9a8ae4 |
| ***Debian 12.13 (2026-05-08) | ubuntu | 6c56c27f-88e7-4016-8f46-ba4938bc12ee |
| ***Windows Server 2022 Standard (2025-05-15) | de6c2733-8d31-4632-82a2-a0f59c88eff6 |
All Ubuntu images come with Apptainer pre-installed.
For further actions with images, check section Snapshots and Images.
GPU usage¶
Users of Ubuntu images should first install NVIDIA drivers, utilities like nvidia-smi, and cuda-toolkit with the following steps:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ubuntu-drivers-common nvidia-cuda-toolkit -y
sudo ubuntu-drivers install
reboot
For more information about GPUs on ScienceCloud, see section GPU-enabled flavors.