Virtual Machine

A Carolina Cloud VM is a full KVM/QEMU virtual machine running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. You get root access, complete system control, persistent NVMe storage, and a public IPv4 address assigned automatically. VMs are ideal for general development, hosting services, or any workload that needs maximum isolation.

Via the Dashboard

1. Sign in at console.carolinacloud.io
2. In the sidebar, click Create then General
3. Click the Virtual Machine card to open the configuration modal
4. Select your CPU tier:
   • General Purpose — AMD EPYC 7000 series, great for most workloads
   • High Performance — AMD Threadripper 7000 / EPYC 9000 series, 5+ GHz clock speeds
5. Use the sliders to configure vCPUs, RAM, and disk size
6. Optionally paste your SSH public key for password-less access
7. Review the hourly cost breakdown at the bottom and click Create Virtual Machine
8. You’ll be redirected to the Instances page. Wait for the status to change from “Provisioning” to “Running” (typically under a minute)

Once running, your instance card will show the SSH command and password. VMs also receive a public IPv4 address automatically.

Via the API

Send a POST request to /api/instance/ with your API key:

curl -X POST https://console.carolinacloud.io/api/instance/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "resource_type": "vm",
    "n_vcpus": 8,
    "mem_gib": 16,
    "disk_size_gib": 100,
    "cpu_tier": "general-purpose",
    "public_key": "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3... user@example.com"
  }'

The response includes the instance UUID, SSH command, password, and public IP. The instance will be in provisioning state and transition to running within a minute.

Optional fields:

Field	Description
name	Human-friendly name for the instance
cpu_tier	general-purpose (default) or high-performance
public_key	SSH public key for password-less access

Via the CLI

# Basic VM
ccloud new vm --cpus 8 --ram 16 --disk 100

# High-performance VM with a name and SSH key
ccloud new vm --cpus 16 --ram 32 --disk 200 \
  --tier high-performance \
  --name dev-server \
  --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Required flags: --cpus, --ram, --disk

Optional flags:

• --name — Instance name
• --tier — general-purpose (default) or high-performance
• --ssh-key — Path to your SSH public key file

After creation, connect immediately:

ccloud ssh dev-server

Connecting to your VM

SSH (terminal):

# Using the SSH command from your instance card
ssh -p 30120 ccloud@login.carolinacloud.io

# Or if you have a public IP
ssh ccloud@<public_ip>

IDE (Cursor, VSCode, Zed):

Add this to ~/.ssh/config:

Host my-vm
    HostName login.carolinacloud.io
    User ccloud
    Port 30120

Then connect with ssh my-vm or use your IDE’s Remote-SSH feature.

Managing your VM

# Stop (pauses compute billing, storage still billed)
ccloud stop <uuid|name>

# Restart
ccloud restart <uuid|name>

# Destroy (permanent — all data is deleted)
ccloud destroy <uuid|name>

You can also stop, restart, and destroy instances from the dashboard using the buttons on each instance card.