Compare the Bring Your Own Image (BYOI) and Bring Your Own Linux (BYOLinux) services to choose the right deployment method for your dedicated server.
Although OVHcloud provides its customers with a wide range of Operating Systems (OS) for their dedicated servers, you might have good reasons to need to install a custom OS:
- OS is not part of the OVHcloud catalog,
- Specific OS build version, or
- OS with a specific kernel version.
There are two different services that you can use for installing a custom OS on a dedicated server:
- Bring Your Own Image (BYOI),
- Bring Your Own Linux (BYOLinux).
This page is about breaking down the feature differences between the Bring Your Own Image and the Bring Your Own Linux services.
Features
| Feature Name | Feature Description | BYOI | BYOLinux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom Image | Provide the download URL to a custom OS image | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom Partitioning¹ | Exploit OVHcloud partitioning API to configure partitions, software RAID, LVM, and ZFS in your custom image at OS installation | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multiple-disks | OS installation on multiple disks² | ❌ | ✅ |
| Image Format | The image URL provided must redirect to a compatible file format | RAW, QCOW2 | QCOW2 |
| Hardware RAID² | Exploit OVHcloud API to configure your dedicated server's hardware raid controller at OS installation | ✅ | ✅ |
| Non-Linux-based OS | In addition to Linux-based-OS, use any OS: UNIX, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. | ✅ | ❌ |
¹ Your image must be built accordingly.
² Assuming you have compatible hardware.
Go further
Bring Your Own Linux (BYOLinux)
OVHcloud API and OS Installation
For more information and tutorials, please see our other Dedicated Servers support guides or explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.