Purchasing a VM

We buy CampusCloud VMs from CMU. To request a new VM:

1. Visit this form.

2. Fill out the form with the following details:

   • Department: ScottyLabs
   • Proposed Server Name: hostname.scottylabs.org
   • Intended OS: Other Linux (Specify Below)
   • Version: NixOS 25.11 (or the current latest stable version)
   • Public subnet
   • Default configuration: 4 CPUs, 16 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD
   • Oracle String: Available under Finance collection in Vaultwarden

3. Submit the form and wait the VM to be provisioned by Computing Services.

They will provide a MAC address for the VM, which you can enter on NetReg.

Before continuing, you must have permissions on NetReg. If you do not have permission, ask the current Head of Developer Operations. This link should have the subnet pre-selected for CampusCloud VMs, but if it is not, go to Register a New Machine and select the subnet A100 Datacenter - Colocation Public. Fill out the form with the following details:

• Hostname: hostname (select scottylabs.org in the dropdown)
• Hardware Address: The MAC address provided by Computing Services
• Affiliation: ScottyLabs

You must then wait for the public IP to be assigned to the VM, which can take up to 30 minutes. Once you have the IP, declare an A record by adding an entry to local.a_records in tofu/cloudflare/records.tf:

hostname = { ip = "<public-ip>", comment = "Campus Cloud VM (https://netreg.net.cmu.edu/)" }

tofu-cloudflare.service on infra-01 will apply the record on the next reconcile. Cloudflare proxying is already off by default for these records.