Connect an LXD or on-premises cloud account

This guide covers connecting two types of self-managed infrastructure to Vantage: LXD (system containers) and on-premises (bare metal or private cloud).

Prerequisites

• A Vantage account with admin permissions
• For LXD: a running LXD server with HTTPS enabled and a client certificate
• For on-premises: outbound HTTPS (port 443) from your infrastructure to Vantage servers

Connect an LXD account

LXD runs system containers like lightweight VMs. It is ideal for multi-tenant dev/test, CI, and smaller batch workloads.

1. Click the Settings gear icon in the bottom-left sidebar and select Cloud Accounts.
2. Click + Create Cloud Account and select LXD.
3. Fill in the form:
   • Account Name (required) -- a display name for this account
   • Description (optional)
   • Server URL (required) -- for example, https://your-lxd-server:8443
   • Client Certificate (required) -- paste your LXD client certificate
   • Client Key (required) -- paste your LXD client key
4. Click Create Cloud Account.

Connect an on-premises account

On-premises accounts are configuration-only entries that tell Vantage about your self-managed hardware. No external credentials are required.

1. Click the Settings gear icon in the bottom-left sidebar and select Cloud Accounts.
2. Click + Create Cloud Account and select On-Premises.
3. Enter an Account Name and optional Description.
4. Click Create Cloud Account.

After creating the account, use one of the on-premises cluster setup methods (Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes, Juju, or Multipass) to connect your infrastructure. See On-premises clusters for setup guides.

Key differences

	LXD	On-Premises
Credentials	Server URL + client certificate + key	None
Provisioning	Vantage provisions containers directly	You provision; Vantage connects via agent
Best for	Dev/test, CI, lightweight workloads	Existing HPC stacks, bare metal, data centres

Related

• Manage cloud accounts
• On-premises clusters reference