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
Spot Instances	ace spot	Instances on spare capacity at a lower hourly price, interruptible
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.