Debian Official Cloud Images

In this directory you can find the cloud images provided by the Debian Cloud Team. The downloadable images in this directory correspond with the images published to the commercial providers with which we have a relationship. You typically will not need to download images here in order to use them on those services. The currently supported cloud environments are:

• Amazon EC2 (amd64, arm64; Also see the wiki and the AWS Marketplace listing)
• Microsoft Azure (amd64; Also see the wiki and The Azure Marketplace)
• OpenStack (amd64, arm64, ppc64el, riscv64; Also see the wiki)
• Plain VM (amd64, arm64, ppc64el, riscv64), suitable for use locally with QEMU; boots directly to a root prompt

From buster on we provide images for different cloud providers in one directory. There we use file names like this:

• debian-13-generic-amd64-20250811-2201.raw
• debian-13-nocloud-riscv64-20250811-2201.raw
• debian-13-ec2-amd64-20250811-2201.tar.xz

• azure: Optimized for the Microsoft Azure environment
• ec2: Optimized for the Amazon EC2
• generic: Should run in any environment using cloud-init, for e.g. OpenStack, DigitalOcean and also on bare metal.
• genericcloud: Identical to generic but with a reduced set of hardware drivers in the kernel. If it does not work for your use case, you should use the generic images.
• nocloud: Does not run cloud-init and boots directly to a root prompt. Useful for local VM instantiation with tools like QEMU.

How to upload to OpenStack?

If you need to inject images into an OpenStack environment, you would typically need to upload it to Glance, using a command like this one (example for amd64):

openstack image create \
    --container-format bare \
    --disk-format qcow2 \
    --property hw_disk_bus=scsi \
    --property hw_scsi_model=virtio-scsi \
    --property os_type=linux \
    --property os_distro=debian \
    --property os_admin_user=debian \
    --property os_version='10.9.1' \
    --public \
    --file debian-13-generic-amd64-20250811-2201.qcow2 \
    debian-13-generic-amd64-20250811-2201.qcow2

Note that hw_disk_bus=scsi and hw_scsi_model=virtio-scsi select the virtio-scsi driver instead of the virtio-blk, which is nicer (on older versions of Qemu, virtio-blk doesn't have the FSTRIM feature, for example). Also, the properties os_type, os_distro, os_version and os_admin_user are OpenStack standards as per this document. It is best practice to set them, especially on public clouds, to allow your cloud users to filter the image list to search what they need, for example using a command like this one:

openstack image list --property os_distro=debian

How can I verify my download is correct and exactly what has been created by Debian?

For the current official images (in the per-distribution directories), the safest method is to download the image and checksum files over TLS from cloud.debian.org or cdimage.debian.org. These names support DNSSEC, so a validating resolver can ensure that a client is connected to a Debian host. And TLS ensures that the data is not manipulated in flight.

The legacy OpenStack images (in the OpenStack/ directory) provide checksums and signatures. See SHA512SUMS.sign, etc. For more information about the verification steps, read the verification guide

If you're interested in contributing checksum signatures for the current images, please reach us on the list: debian-cloud at lists.debian.org.

Other questions?

See the Cloud FAQ on the wiki

Contact the Debian Cloud Team: debian-cloud at lists.debian.org