Authentication
Send an API key as a bearer token. The key must carry the sites.view permission; a key without it is refused with 403, not 404.
Where your organisation id goes
This endpoint takes org_id as a field in the JSON body.
Your organisation id is on the API keys screen in your dashboard, beside the key itself. It is the same id in every call you make.
Try it
Replace anything in angle brackets with your own values, and the key placeholder with a key from your dashboard.
curl -X POST https://api.zinndigital.com/v1/compute/servers \
-H "Authorization: Bearer zdk_live_…" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "name": <string>, "zone": <string> }'Signed in? The API console in your dashboard fills in your real organisation id and your own key, and runs the request against the live API so you can see the actual response. Open this endpoint in the API console
Details
Buys a machine. 202 and the pending server: the purchase is durable and runs off the request path as a Temporal workflow (§2.9), so the client polls the returned server until status leaves provisioning. ⛔ The row is written first and the workflow started second. The reverse would mean a workflow whose row does not exist yet, and its first activity would fail on a race it can never win. The row's id is also the workflow id and the machine's name at the provider, which is what makes the whole path idempotent. If the workflow service cannot be reached the order is refused 503 with nothing charged — an acceptance is never fabricated, because the customer would watch a spinner for a server that was never ordered and then order it again. Send either spec or plan_code; neither is 422, not a 500. org_id is required only of a caller who belongs to more than one organisation, and naming one they cannot create in is 403. A size, zone or disk/bandwidth pair the provider does not offer, or a name already taken, is 422 in our wording. Requires sites.view and billing.entitlement.manage — ⛔ not sites.create, which is what this was until #1682. Ordering a machine charges Zinn®'s reseller balance immediately and bills nobody, so it is deliberately a STAFF key; sites.create is held by the customer dev role.
Request body
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
name | string | Yes | What to call the machine. It is also the name at the provider, which is what lets a retried purchase find the machine it already bought instead of buying a second. |
zone | string | Yes | The data centre, as getComputeCatalogue reported it. |
spec | string | No | The machine size, as the configurator reported it. ⭐ Either this or plan_code, not both — and where the provider publishes no sizes the two collapse into one, because the… |
plan_code | string | No | The tier to buy, for a catalogue-aware caller. Either this or spec. |
org_id | Uuid | No | The organisation to buy for. Required only when the caller belongs to more than one — picking "the first org in scope" would buy a server on an arbitrary tenant's balance.… |
provider | string | No | Which platform to place it on. Omitted, the engine resolves the range's default — ⛔ except on a range priced per data centre (ComputeTier.zoned), where omitting it is… |
image | string | No | The operating system or one-click application the machine boots, as getComputeCatalogue reported it in ComputeProvider.images. ⛔ Required — 422 — on any range that publishes… |
ssh_keys | string[] | No | The ids of the authorised keys to install at build time, from listComputeSshKeys. Every id must be one of the ordering organisation's own registered keys (listComputeSshKeys… |
blueprint | string<, bare, docker, k3s, k3s_argocd> | No | W43-49 (docs/689). The software stack installed at first boot on a Zinn® Cloud machine: Docker Engine, single-machine k3s, or k3s with Argo CD. Refused on a range whose first… |
term_months | integer | No | How many months to buy up front. Outside 1…36 is refused 422 before a single vendor write, the same bound renewComputeServer applies. |
optimisation | string | No | A stack optimisation profile, as the configurator reported it. |
disk | string | No | An explicit disk allocation, for a provider whose supports_disk_and_bandwidth is true. Sending it to one whose is false is refused. |
bandwidth | string | No | An explicit transfer allocation, for a provider whose supports_disk_and_bandwidth is true. |
Response
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
id | Uuid | Yes | Ours, and also the provisioning workflow's id and the machine's name at the provider — which is what makes the whole purchase path idempotent. |
name | string | Yes | What the customer called it. ⛔ At the provider a machine's name is its row id; confusing the two is a cross-tenant defect, so this is the customer's string and nothing else. |
deploy_target | string | Yes | Which compute range the machine belongs to. |
plan_code | string | Yes | The tier it was bought on, or "" when it was ordered by size alone. |
provider | string | Yes | Our provider id. |
spec | string | Yes | The machine size it currently runs. |
zone | string | Yes | The data centre it runs in. |
status | string<pending, provisioning, active, failed, suspended, terminated, resizing, terminating> | Yes | How far the order got — ours, and a different fact from power_state. pending is a row with nothing bought and nothing charged; failed is the state whose message is the… |
message | string | Yes | Why the order failed, in a sentence the customer reads. Blank unless failed. |
vendor_status | string | Yes | The provider's own word, verbatim and unrounded. Staff-facing detail; a customer client renders status and never this. |
power_state | string<unknown, on, off, starting, stopping, rebooting> | Yes | What the machine is doing right now. ⛔ Six values, not two, and the four extra ones are the point: a machine mid-transition is not "on". unknown is the honest answer when… |
addresses | string[] | Yes | Public addresses if the provider states them. Empty means not stated, never "none" — a machine rendered as having no address reads as broken. |
optimisation | string | Yes | The stack optimisation profile it was built with, or "" for none. |
term_months | integer | Yes | The term it was bought on, or null when the provider states none. |
renews_at | string | Yes | ⛔ Always null today, and honestly so: the provider publishes no renewal date, and one computed from the order plus the term would be our arithmetic rendered as the provider's… |
created_at | string | Yes | When the row was created, or "" when not stated. |
terminated_at | object | No | When the machine was terminated; null while it exists. Owner decision D11 (2026-10-06): a terminated server leaves the servers list and the last five from the past 7 days appear… |
operable | boolean | Yes | Whether the customer may act on this machine — power, resize, renew, rebuild. ⛔ Read rather than re-derived from status: the engine refuses every one of those on anything but… |
image | string | Yes | The provider image the machine was built from. Blank on the resold range, which installs one managed image and offers no choice. |
suspended | boolean | Yes | ⛔⛔ Whether WE stopped it, which is not the same fact as power_state. A stopped machine is the customer's own choice and they may start it again; a suspended one is ours and… |
suspension_reason | string | Yes | Why, verbatim, so the customer reads the same sentence support wrote. Blank when the machine is in good standing. |
capabilities | string[] | Yes | ⭐⭐ What this machine's provider can actually do — capability tokens such as compute:snapshots, compute:console, compute:firewall, compute:backups_manage and… |
billing | ComputeServerBilling | Yes | How a machine is paid for (W43-47, docs/687). term machines are charged ahead by a per-machine subscription. metered machines are charged per started hour from the account… |
login_user | string | Yes | The account to sign in as (W43-49, docs/689). admin — key-only, passwordless sudo, root login refused — on a Zinn® Cloud machine built under the access model; root on one… |
blueprint | string<, docker, k3s, k3s_argocd> | Yes | The software stack installed at first boot. Blank for none. |
cluster_id | string | Yes | The cluster this machine is a node of, or blank. |
cluster_role | string<, server, agent> | Yes | — |
Errors this endpoint can return
401 · 403 · 404 · 422 · 429 · 503