---
title: "Exoscale Flexible Storage (compute instance) template"
description: "A new Debian-based template, leveraging a UEFI/GPT partition table and LVM partitioning for flexible storage management."
date: 2021-07-22
author: "Cédric Dufour"
url: https://www.exoscale.com/blog/flexible-storage-template/
---
# Exoscale Flexible Storage (compute instance) template

It is common practice among cloud providers and a long tradition at Exoscale to let users choose
from a wide choice of compute instance templates, spanning many different operating systems (Linux,
Windows, BSD, etc.), distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, SUSE, etc.) and versions.

Those templates are usually prepared by upstream "vendors" themselves, with disk images specifically
crafted for cloud platforms and readily available for cloud deployment (with the help of components
such as [cloud-init][cloud-init]).

[cloud-init]: https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

One notable fact about most of those disk images is their disk partitioning being based on a _single
partition_ and a _filesystem chosen by the upstream vendor_ (e.g. `ext4` or `xfs`, `btrfs`, etc.).

Unfortunately, this single partition and choice of filesystem may not entirely fit the bill of
users with specific storage requirements, such as snapshots, checksums, encryption, etc.


## Exoscale Flexible Storage template

The **Exoscale Flexible Storage template** aims at addressing this shortcoming and empowering users
to manage their instance's disk/storage as they deem fit, by providing:

* a _minimalistic_ [Debian][debian-os]-based template, with no extraneous components and only
  what is required to get you started (namely: `cloud-init` and `sudo`)

* built _from scratch_ using the [Debian "netinst" installation media][debian-cdimage]
  and the `ssh-server` installation scenario (aka. `tasksel`)

* using **[UEFI][wikipedia-uefi] boot mode** and a **[GPT][wikipedia-gpt] partition table**
  (as opposed to Debian's stock cloud image), such as to enable support for larger-than-2TiB disk
  images (e.g. along [Exoscale Storage Optimized Instances][exoscale-offering-storage])

* using **[LVM][wikipedia-lvm] logical partitioning** (as opposed to Debian's stock cloud image),
  such as to allow you to manage partitions and filesystems as you deem fit

[debian-os]: https://www.debian.org/
[debian-cdimage]: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/
[exoscale-offering-storage]: https://www.exoscale.com/pricing/#storage-optimized-instances
[wikipedia-uefi]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
[wikipedia-gpt]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
[wikipedia-lvm]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_%28Linux%29

Please refer to [Exoscale Documentation][exoscale-doc-flexible-storage] for further details on how
to get started and use this template.

[exoscale-doc-flexible-storage]: https://community.exoscale.com/documentation/compute/flexible-storage-template/