SWITCH official images
SWITCH provides preconfigured images for the SWITCHengines users, for different GNU/Linux flavors as well as Windows. They can be recognized by a "(SWITCHengines)" tag in their names. We will periodically update these images in order to keep them safe and fresh, according to our release/update policy.
In particular, you will find official images for the following 64-bit operating systems:
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - Trusty Tahr
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS - Xenial Xerus
- Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - Bionic Beaver
- Debian 8 - Jessie
- Debian 9 - Stretch
- CentOS 7
- Fedora 28
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
- NixOS 17.03
- RStudio Appliance (based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS)
The Linux images are customized so that:
1) They use the "cloud-init" mechanism to adapt to the environment. For example, the primary file system will be resized according to the size of the instance's primary volume.
2) Instances will automatically install security updates. Notice though that no automatic reboot of the machine is triggered; this is left to the repsonsibility of users.
3) NTP/Chrony is enabled, and local Swiss NTP servers are used.
4) Software installation mechanisms (e.g. apt) will use Swiss mirrors for performance.
Once you have started an instance from one of the images above, you can log in to the 'ubuntu', 'centos', 'debian', 'fedora', 'core', or 'nixos' user, respectively, using SSH public-key authentication. Once logged in, use sudo to gain root privileges when necessary.
Windows Servers are accessible with the remote desktop application.