Compute

The Compute section of the ACE CLI covers everything related to virtual machine infrastructure: creating and managing instances, selecting hardware configurations (flavors), choosing operating system images, and managing SSH key pairs for secure access.

Resources

Resource	Command	Description
Instances	ace instance	Virtual machines — create, power manage, resize, snapshot, and more
Flavors	ace flavor	Hardware configurations (CPU, RAM, disk, GPU) with pricing
Images	ace image	Operating system and application images for booting instances
Key Pairs	ace key-pair	SSH key pairs for secure instance access

Quick Start

Provision a complete instance in four steps:

# 1. Pick a flavor (hardware size)
ace flavor list --cpu

# 2. Pick an image (operating system)
ace image list --os ubuntu

# 3. Create an SSH key pair
ace key-pair create --name my-key

# 4. Launch the instance
ace instance create \
  --name my-vm \
  --flavor C4i.medium \
  --image Ubuntu-22.04-LTS \
  --network <vpc-id> \
  --security-group <sg-id> \
  --key my-key

Global Flags

All compute commands support these global flags:

Flag	Short	Description
--output	-o	Output format: table (default), json, yaml
--verbose	-v	Enable verbose output
--project		Override project ID
--region		Override region

Prerequisites

Before using compute commands, you must:

1. Authenticate — Run ace login to obtain an API token.

2. Set a project — Run ace config set project_id <id> or use the --project flag.

3. Set a region — Run ace config set region <region> or use the --region flag.

Configuration is stored in ~/.ace/config.json. You can also use environment variables:

Variable	Purpose
ACE_TOKEN	API authentication token
ACE_PROJECT_ID	Default project ID
ACE_REGION	Default region
ACE_API_URL	Override API endpoint (debugging)

Precedence: CLI flag > environment variable > config file > hardcoded default.