cloudalone¶
A single-machine "cloud in a box" that speaks the Hetzner Cloud API.
cloudalone exposes an hcloud-compatible REST surface (servers, actions, SSH keys, a fixed catalog) so the official hcloud CLI and client libraries drive it unchanged. You just point them at your endpoint instead of api.hetzner.cloud. Behind that API it boots lightweight VMs with libvirt/QEMU on one Linux host and gives each VM its own public IPv6 address.
It is deliberately minimal: a small REST API, SQLite for state, a fixed catalog of server types and images, a thin libvirt backend. No control plane, no clustering, no message broker.
Why¶
You have one decent Linux box and you want to spin VMs up and down like you would on a real cloud: scripted, repeatable, with the same tooling. cloudalone gives you that without adopting a whole IaaS stack: the hcloud CLI you already know, real cloud-init VMs, and a public address per VM you can SSH straight into.
export HCLOUD_TOKEN=… HCLOUD_ENDPOINT=https://api.example.com/v1
hcloud server create --name web1 --type small --image debian-13 --ssh-key me
ssh root@$(hcloud server ip -6 web1)
What it is (and isn't)¶
It is
A working prototype of a minimal hcloud API: server CRUD + power actions, SSH keys, a fixed catalog, IPv6-only guests, one host, one token. Drive it with the real hcloud CLI and client libraries.
It isn't
Production-hardened or multi-tenant. No clustering, no billing, no web UI, no IPv4 for guests. Treat it as a POC you can actually use.
Where next¶
- New here? → Install & run locally, then Your first server.
- Want the mental model? → How it works and IPv6 networking.
- Running it for real? → Deploying to a host.
- Looking something up? → Configuration, Catalog, REST API.
- Hacking on it? → Developer guide.