Instance Management
CloudRift CLI provides commands for discovering available instance types and renting instances through the public API. These commands work with the CloudRift marketplace — unlike rift docker run which targets your own cluster, these commands rent instances from available providers.
Listing Instance Types
To see what instance types are available on the marketplace:
rift instance-type list
This displays available instance types along with availability information.
Filtering Results
Use --service to filter by instance service type:
rift instance-type list --service docker
rift instance-type list --service vm
Use --datacenter to filter by datacenter location:
rift instance-type list --datacenter us-east
Filters can be combined:
rift instance-type list --service vm --datacenter us-east
Renting an Instance
Renting a VM Instance
To rent a virtual machine instance, use the --image flag to specify the VM image:
rift instance rent --image ubuntu-22.04
Renting a Docker Instance
To rent a Docker container instance, use the --docker-image flag:
rift instance rent --docker-image pytorch/pytorch:latest
Listing Instances and Failure Reasons
To list your instances:
rift instance list
Rentals that fail before becoming active are shown with the Failed status, and rift instance list displays the failure reason under the affected rental (for example a bad Docker image, a broken container command, or a VM boot failure). Terminating a Failed rental dismisses it: the status moves to Inactive and it disappears from the default listing. Its resources were already released when the failure was recorded.
These commands interact with the CloudRift public API to rent instances from marketplace providers. For managing containers on your own cluster, see Launching Jobs. For managing VM lifecycle (start/stop), see VM Management.