Instances
Create an isolated VM or container on one of your nodes — the home your sites live in — and manage it from the instance workspace.
An instance is an isolated environment on one of your nodes: its own filesystem, network, and resource limits. It's where your sites actually run. By default an instance is a KVM virtual machine (safe for untrusted content); a lighter container is a trusted-only option.
Creating an instance
From Instances → New instance (or the Create instance button on a node):
Pick the host node. Choose which online node runs it. (Coming from a node? It's pre-selected.)
Choose the type. VM (the default — hardware-isolated, safe for untrusted tenants) or container (lighter, trusted-only). The default follows the node's topology class.
Size it. Name it, pick the base image (Ubuntu 24.04 by default), and set CPU / memory / disk limits — all editable later.
Create. The agent builds the instance on the node, then runs readiness checks. You land in the instance workspace.
Readiness checks catch the usual suspects
Before anything is installed, checks run inside the instance — network interface, DHCP lease, DNS, and whether the package mirror is reachable — and a failure tells you how to fix it, so you never chase a silent install error.
The instance workspace tabs are: Overview · Sites · Network · Terminal · Services · Defaults · History. Two of them group related areas behind an inner toggle — Services holds the service catalog and Databases, and History holds Snapshots and the Reconcile log.
Overview
The instance's status and readiness report, live usage bars for memory and disk, and its CPU limit.
Metrics
Memory and disk trends, a container-density chart (how many containers have been running over time), and a readiness-history strip. For a docker-hosting instance, a per-container CPU breakdown shows which app is using what.
Sites
The sites hosted in this instance, with a jump into each — and a shortcut to launch a new one here.
Network
The instance's private IP and traffic totals, and how it's reached. On a multi-IP node this is where a routed public IP can be assigned; on single-IP nodes traffic comes through the shared NAT lane.
Terminal
Open a real terminal straight into the running instance, as root. It's admin-only and audited — operators don't see the tab, and can't open a session. (Formerly "Console".)
“incus daemon didn't respond”?
If the terminal opens but shows a "Failed to begin transaction" or similar error and ends, that's
the node's container daemon (incus) not responding — not a login problem. The panel points you at the
node; on the node, check systemctl status incus and df -h, and systemctl restart incus clears a
wedged daemon.
Services
The stack and data engines installed inside the instance, with an inner toggle between Services and Databases.
Services is the stack from the service catalog — web server, PHP, database engines, and so on. Install what a site needs, or check what's already there.
Databases lists the databases on the instance, each with its engine, name, and user. A site can create its database here as part of launch, and you can open a query console against any of them.
→ See everything you can install: What you can install.
Defaults
The instance's cascade defaults — the git account, DNS provider, and SSL issuer — inherited from the node and passed down to its sites unless overridden.
History
The instance's point-in-time state, with an inner toggle between Snapshots and the Reconcile log.
Snapshots lets you take a named snapshot of the whole instance and restore it later — a quick checkpoint before a risky change: snapshot, change, then roll back if it goes wrong. Reconcile log lists every reconcile run against the instance, re-openable, so you can see exactly what changed.
How it works
Resource limits, networking, and the installed stack are all applied by the agent through reconcile — the panel decides, the agent acts, and it's safe to re-run. An instance is the boundary your tenants sit behind; see Tenant isolation for why instances default to a VM and the network controls that keep tenants apart (no seeing each other, no reaching the panel, no address spoofing).
Re-adopt workloads
When a node is reconnected to a panel that has lost its records — a database reset, a restore from an older backup, or a move to a fresh panel — discover what's still running on the box and bring those instances and sites back under management.
Catalog
The menu of software you can install into an instance — web servers, PHP, Node, databases, and caches — with pinned versions and clean, checkpointed installs.