Getting started using API
Warning
Flex Metal is under active development and still in closed Alpha state.
Please get in touch with the i3D.net sales team to learn more about the product state and roadmap or if you wish to be part of the closed Alpha program for Flex Metal.
What is Flex Metal
Flex Metal is a bare metal server provisioning platform that combines the efficiency and flexibility of cloud services with the performance of dedicated hardware on either hourly or monthly billing.
Compute resources can be ordered On-Demand without capacity guarantee (first come first serve basis). A committed pool can be defined as a base layer for guaranteed resources with On-Demand as additional non-guaranteed burst capacity.
General concept
The general concept is to create an Order of servers with specifying:
-
a
Profilethan contains : Operating System asOSid, ServerHostnameand optionalpostInstallScript. -
a Location (Datacenter geography) as
locationId -
an instance type (server hardware configuration) as
instanceTypeId -
an amount of servers to Order
-
a public SSH Key that have been previously uploaded
Order request body properties
| Property | Value type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| locationId | int | Required | Datacenter id, look up in GET /v3/flexMetal/location/ |
| instanceTypeId | int | Required | Flex Metal instance type, look up in GET /v3/flexMetal/location/{locationid}/instanceTypes |
| amount | int | Required | Number of Flex Metal servers to order |
| profileId | int | Required | Profile ID (OS, parameters, postinstall), look up in GET /v3/flexMetal/profile |
| sshKeyId | UUid | Required | Manage your SSH keys via POST /v3/sshKey. The public key will be installed for the root user. |
Step 1: Get API token
The procedure is documented in API v3 Authentication
Create an API Key and don’t forget to add IP whitelisting to access the API.
API Key is to be used in HTTP Header as Key = PRIVATE-TOKEN and Value = your_api_key
Step 2: Create SSH key
With Body
{
"name": "mySSHKey",
"publicKey": "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1....."
}
Verify that you SSH Key is well created
Response: please note the uuid
[
{
"uuid": "a4a6e9c5-a3ba-xxxx-xxxx-7da2bbf25d61",
"name": "mySSHKey",
"publicKey": "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1.....",
"createdAt": 1715004031
}
]
Step 3: Create Profile
To create a Flex Metal server profile, you will need to know which Operating System id to use by using below endpoint:
Look up the desired OS and note the id
For example CentOS 8.5 is id 245
{
"id": 245,
"name": "CentOS 8.5",
"slug": "centos-85",
"osGroup": 2,
"isOdp": 1,
"availableForFlexMetal": 1,
"active": 1
},
Then create the Profile with Body as example with os.id 245
{
"name": "myProfileCentos",
"os": {
"id": 245
},
"postInstallScript": "#!/bin/bash\necho \"Hello world\" > /tmp/test.txt"
}
Finally verify the profile is created with
GET /v3/flexMetal/profile
Response as below example, please note the Profile id (437 in that case)
[
{
"id": 437,
"name": "myProfileCentos",
"os": {
"id": 245,
"kernelParams": []
},
"postInstallScript": "echo 'TOTO' > /tmp/TOTO-test.txt"
},
]
Step 4 : Get the Flex Metal Instance id and Location id
Step 4.1 : Get Location id
Search for the desired Location, as example EU: Rotterdam is Location id is 18
{
"id": 18,
"name": "EU: Rotterdam",
"shortName": "ams",
"displayName": "EU: Rotterdam",
"countryId": 149,
"countryName": "Netherlands",
"countryShortName": "NL"
},
Step 4.2 : Get Instance Type id
Using the Location id from Step 4.1
GET /v3/flexMetal/location/{locationid}/instanceTypes
For example in Rotterdam (location is 18)
Response as below, search for desired instance, as example bm7.std.8 is instance type id 129
{
"id": 129,
"locationId": 18,
"name": "bm7.std.8",
"sockets": 1,
"cores": 8,
"memory": 16,
"memoryType": "std",
"storage": 480,
"storageType": "ssd",
"instanceTypeGenerationId": 29,
"generationName": "Coffee Lake",
"pricing": [
{
"price": 31,
"currencyId": 0,
"type": "hour"
}
]
},
Step 5: Create a Flex Metal order
You will need the above id to proceed to your Flex Metal order:
- Location ID
- Instance Type ID
- Profile ID
- SSHKey uuid
Step 5.1: Create order
with the body below as example
{
"locationId": 18,
"instanceTypeId": 129,
"amount": 1,
"profileId": 437,
"sshKeyUuid": "a4a6e9c5-a3ba-xxxx-xxxx-7da2bbf25d61"
}
you will get a Response as below, please note the OrderID
[
{
"orderId": "018f7891-c004-xxx-xxx-7300dcd04b8b"
}
]
Step 5.2: Get order status
GET /v3/flexMetal/order/{OrderID}
Response as below example, please note the hostId (in that case 3321477)
[
{
"client": {
"id": 12345,
"name": "SampleCustomer"
},
"orderId": "019053a5-bdc5-734a-xxxx-3061b82dbf2e",
"location": {
"id": 8,
"name": "US: Los Angeles - CA"
},
"amount": 1,
"status": "inProgress",
"servers": [
{
"id": 157437,
"hostId": 3321477,
"status": "provisioning",
"profile": {
"operatingSystem": {
"operatingSystem": "Ubuntu",
"version": "22.04",
"kernelParams": []
},
"postScript": "#!/bin/bash echo 'TEST' > /tmp/test.txt",
"instanceType": {
"id": 129,
"name": "bm7.std.8"
},
"sshKey": {
"name": "sample-ssh",
"content": "redacted"
}
},
"deliveredAt": 1719390290,
"releasedAt": null
}
],
"createdAt": 1719390289
}
]
Step 6: Server details to connect
Use the hostID from the order details from the previous step to retrieve all specific information for each server including the IP addresses.
Note
You can also use GET /v3/host/summary for a less expansive list of all hosts.
Response as below example, please note the IP address which is "private": 0, to have IP to SSH into
[
{
"id": 3321477,
"userId": 12345,
"serverId": 157437,
"serverName": "Server 202015",
"serverType": 0,
"projectName": "",
"clientServerName": "",
"clientState": "",
"liveHostName": "server202015.dedi.i3d.net",
"isVirtual": 0,
"category": "Dedicated Servers",
"osId": 261,
"locationId": 8,
"dcLocationId": 2,
"instanceType": "",
"fleetId": "0",
"newFleetId": null,
"fleetAssociatedSince": 0,
"rackName": "LA3:01:002160:0409",
"dateStart": "2024-06-26",
"dateEnd": "2074-06-26",
"dateCancelled": "0000-00-00",
"dateEndContract": "0000-00-00",
"contractPeriod": 1,
"extendPeriod": 1,
"cancellationPeriod": 1,
"purchaseOrder": "",
"paymentTerm": 30,
"pricePerMonth": "0",
"pricePerTbOveruse": "0",
"currencyId": 0,
"bandwidthBillingType": 2,
"bandwidthContractual": 0,
"ipAddress": [
{
"ipAddress": "172.26.xxx.xxxx",
"version": 4,
"type": 2,
"private": 1,
"interface": 1,
"macAddress": "B8:CB:29:9F:FD:47",
"rDns": "hosted-by.i3d.net.",
"vlanId": 26,
"gateway": "172.26.xxx.xxx",
"netmask": "255.255.252.0",
"prefix": 22
},
{
"ipAddress": "162.244.xxx.xxxx",
"version": 4,
"type": 1,
"private": 0,
"interface": 1,
"macAddress": "B8:CB:29:9F:FD:47",
"rDns": "hosted-by.i3d.net.",
"vlanId": 606,
"gateway": "162.244.xxx.xxx",
"netmask": "255.255.255.224",
"prefix": 27
}
],
"brand": "Dell",
"model": "PowerEdge R240",
"numCpu": 1,
"cpuInfo": "Type 0, Family 6, Model 158, Stepping 13",
"cpuType": "Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2278G CPU @ 3.40GHz",
"cpuLoad": 0,
"cpu": {
"socket": 1,
"cores": 8,
"threads": 16,
"info": "Type 0, Family 6, Model 158, Stepping 13",
"type": "Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2278G CPU @ 3.40GHz"
},
"memUsed": 0,
"memMax": 0,
"memFree": 0,
"disk": [
{
"diskType": "ATA Disk",
"diskMedium": "ssd",
"model": "",
"product": "MZ7LH960HBJR0D3",
"diskSerial": "XXXX",
"firmwareVersion": "HG59",
"rotationRate": 0,
"sectorSizeLogical": 0,
"sectorSizePhysical": 0,
"size": 894000000000
}
],
"memory": [
{
"brand": "AMD",
"model": "9965745-028.A00G ",
"size": 17179869184,
"speed": 2666,
"ecc": 1,
"memoryBank": 0,
"memoryType": "DIMM DDR4 2666 MHz Synchronous, Unbuffered (Unregistered), ECC",
"memorySlot": "A1",
"memorySerial": "599E5824"
},
{
"brand": "AMD",
"model": "9965745-028.A00G ",
"size": 17179869184,
"speed": 2666,
"ecc": 1,
"memoryBank": 1,
"memoryType": "DIMM DDR4 2666 MHz Synchronous, Unbuffered (Unregistered), ECC",
"memorySlot": "A2",
"memorySerial": "5158882D"
}
],
"isReserve": 0,
"labels": [],
"serviceTag": "31XXXXX",
"isODP": 0,
"fmOrderId": "12345",
"installStatus": null,
"status": "ON",
"trafficSum": 0,
"uplinks": [
{
"uplinkId": 77001,
"aggregate": false
},
{
"uplinkId": 77002,
"aggregate": false
}
],
"freeIncomingTraffic": false,
"outgoingTrafficSum": 0,
"incomingTrafficSum": 0
}
]
Step 7: Connect to server
Note
Make sure that you listed the source IP for SSH and have sent the information to i3D.net support for whitelisting in ACL.
Using your private SSH key, log in with SSH with root username.
Step 8: Release the server
To release the server and stop the billing, you will need to refer to serverId:
Include the serverId to release with below Request Body as an example:
{
"serverIds": [
130405,130406
]
}