# Virtual Machines Instances

The `VirtualMachineInstance` type conceptionally has two parts:

* Information for making scheduling decisions
* Information about the virtual machine ABI

Every `VirtualMachineInstance` object represents a single running virtual machine instance.

## API Overview

With the installation of KubeVirt, new types are added to the Kubernetes API to manage Virtual Machines.

You can interact with the new resources (via `kubectl`) as you would with any other API resource.

## VirtualMachineInstance API

> Note: A full API reference is available at <https://kubevirt.io/api-reference/>.

Here is an example of a VirtualMachineInstance object:

```
apiVersion: kubevirt.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualMachineInstance
metadata:
  name: testvmi-nocloud
spec:
  terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
  domain:
    resources:
      requests:
        memory: 1024M
    devices:
      disks:
      - name: containerdisk
        disk:
          bus: virtio
      - name: emptydisk
        disk:
          bus: virtio
      - disk:
          bus: virtio
        name: cloudinitdisk
  volumes:
  - name: containerdisk
    containerDisk:
      image: kubevirt/fedora-cloud-container-disk-demo:latest
  - name: emptydisk
    emptyDisk:
      capacity: "2Gi"
  - name: cloudinitdisk
    cloudInitNoCloud:
      userData: |-
        #cloud-config
        password: fedora
        chpasswd: { expire: False }
```

This example uses a fedora cloud image in combination with cloud-init and an ephemeral empty disk with a capacity of `2Gi`. For the sake of simplicity, the volume sources in this example are ephemeral and don't require a provisioner in your cluster.

## Additional Information

* More information about persistent and ephemeral volumes: [Disks and Volumes](/user-guide/docs/virtual_machines/disks_and_volumes.md)
* How to access a VirtualMachineInstance via `console` or `vnc`: [Console Access](/user-guide/docs/virtual_machines/accessing_virtual_machines.md)
* How to customize VirtualMachineInstances with `cloud-init`: [Cloud Init](/user-guide/docs/virtual_machines/startup_scripts.md#cloud-init)


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