Cloud Providers & VM Provisioning

Connect VMware vCenter or Proxmox VE to Skitflow and provision VMs directly from the dashboard (self-hosted + enterprise only).

Cloud Providers are self-hosted only and require an active enterprise license or trial with the cloudProviders feature enabled.

Skitflow can connect to on-premises hypervisors and provision virtual machines on demand. Supported backends:

Type	Hypervisor
`vmware`	VMware vCenter (ESXi)
`proxmox`	Proxmox VE

Permissions

Three roles govern access. Owners and admins bypass permission checks automatically.

Permission	What it allows
`cloud.manage`	Create/update/delete providers, VM tiers, and VM orders
`cloud.order`	Order VMs and delete their org's VM orders
`cloud.read`	Read-only access to providers, tiers, and orders

Configure roles under Settings → Custom Roles.

Cloud Providers

A cloud provider is the connection record for a hypervisor endpoint. Credentials are stored AES-GCM encrypted.

Adding a provider

Navigate to Settings → Cloud Providers → Add Provider and fill in:

Field	Description
Name	Display label
Type	`vmware` or `proxmox`
Host	vCenter/Proxmox hostname or IP
Auth mode	`password` (username + password) or `token` (API token)
Username	Service account username
Password / Token	Credential (write-only — not readable after save)
Skip TLS verification	Disable certificate verification for self-signed certs

Click Test Connection to verify before saving.

Managing providers

Action	Notes
Edit	All fields except `type` can be updated. Password is re-encrypted only when a new value is submitted.
Delete	Removes the provider record. Associated VM tiers and VM order (provision) records are cascade-deleted. Registered server rows and running VMs are not touched.
Inventory	Fetches the live resource list from the hypervisor (networks, datastores, templates, resource pools for VMware; nodes, storages, bridges, templates for Proxmox).

API examples

# List providers
curl -X GET 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.listProviders' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'

# Create a VMware provider
curl -X POST 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.createProvider' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "name": "vCenter Dev",
    "providerType": "vmware",
    "authMode": "password",
    "host": "vcenter.internal",
    "username": "[email protected]",
    "password": "secret",
    "skipTlsVerify": false
  }'

# Test a connection without saving
curl -X POST 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.testProvider' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "providerType": "proxmox",
    "authMode": "token",
    "host": "proxmox.internal:8006",
    "username": "root@pam",
    "password": "TOKEN_VALUE",
    "skipTlsVerify": true
  }'

VM Tiers

A VM tier is a saved hardware + placement template attached to one provider. Members with cloud.order can order VMs from tiers without needing cloud.manage.

VMware tier placement fields

Field	Description
`templateMoid`	Source VM/template managed object ID
`networkMoid`	Target network/portgroup MOID
`datastoreMoid`	Target datastore MOID
`resourcePoolMoid`	Resource pool MOID
`folderMoid`	(optional) Destination folder MOID

Proxmox tier placement fields

Field	Description
`templateVmid`	Source template VMID
`node`	Target Proxmox node name
`storageId`	(optional) Storage for the cloned disk
`bridge`	(optional) Network bridge; if omitted, the template's existing network config is kept. `vlanTag` is only applied when `bridge` is set.
`vlanTag`	(optional) VLAN tag 1–4094
`ipAddress`	(optional) Static IP for cloud-init
`ipCidr`	(optional) Prefix length (0–32)
`gateway`	(optional) Default gateway
`sshUsername`	(optional) Username injected via cloud-init
`extraDiskGb`	(optional) Additional data disk size
`extraDiskStorageId`	(optional) Storage for the extra disk

Common hardware fields (both types)

Field	Description
`cpu`	vCPU count (≥ 1)
`memoryMb`	RAM in MiB (≥ 256)
`diskGb`	Root disk size in GiB (≥ 1)
`sshKeyId`	(optional) SSH key to inject (must belong to the same org)
`cloudInitExtra`	(optional) Additional cloud-init user-data

API examples

# List tiers for a provider
curl -X GET 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.listTiers?cloudProviderId=PROVIDER_ID' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'

# Create a Proxmox tier
curl -X POST 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.createTier' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "name": "2vCPU / 4 GB",
    "cloudProviderId": "PROVIDER_ID",
    "cpu": 2,
    "memoryMb": 4096,
    "diskGb": 40,
    "placement": {
      "kind": "proxmox",
      "templateVmid": 9000,
      "node": "pve01",
      "bridge": "vmbr0"
    }
  }'

VM Provisioning

A VM provision (order) tracks one VM lifecycle from request through hypervisor deployment to a registered Skitflow server.

Ordering a VM

Navigate to Settings → Servers → Order VM (also available from Settings → Cloud Providers). Choose a saved tier or fill in ad-hoc custom parameters.

For Proxmox orders from a tier, you can override the IP address and extra disk at order time without changing the tier.

Order payload (from tier)

curl -X POST 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.orderVm' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "vmName": "app-01",
    "vmTierId": "TIER_ID"
  }'

Order payload (custom, VMware)

curl -X POST 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.orderVm' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "vmName": "app-02",
    "cloudProviderId": "PROVIDER_ID",
    "custom": {
      "kind": "vmware",
      "cpu": 4,
      "memoryMb": 8192,
      "diskGb": 80,
      "templateMoid": "vm-100",
      "networkMoid": "network-10",
      "datastoreMoid": "datastore-5",
      "resourcePoolMoid": "resgroup-8"
    }
  }'

Provision status lifecycle

pending → cloning → customizing ─┬→ waiting_ip → ready
                                  │                ↘ failed
                                  └──────────────────↘ manual

Status	Meaning
`pending`	Queued, not yet started
`cloning`	Hypervisor is cloning the template
`customizing`	Applying CPU/RAM/disk/network configuration
`waiting_ip`	Waiting for the VM to report an IP address. Skipped entirely for a Proxmox order with a static `ipAddress` — that address is used directly.
`ready`	VM is running and registered as a Skitflow server
`failed`	Provisioning failed — see `errorMessage` on the provision record
`manual`	VM was created but requires manual server registration — either no SSH key/cloud-init failed (reached straight from `customizing`) or the IP poll timed out after `waiting_ip`. `errorMessage` states which case applies.

Once ready, the provisioned VM appears in Servers and can be used for deployments.

Deleting a provision

Deleting a provision:

Destroys the VM on the hypervisor (best-effort — a connection failure is logged but does not block deletion).
Removes the linked server record from the Servers list.
Deletes the provision row.

curl -X POST 'https://your-instance/api/cloud.removeProvision' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"vmProvisionId": "PROVISION_ID"}'

Audit log

Every create, update, and delete action on providers, tiers, and provisions is recorded in Audit Logs under resource types cloud-provider, vm-tier, and vm-provision.

Cloud Providers & VM Provisioning

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