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. Omitt… |
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 refu… |
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 publish… |
ssh_keys | string[] | No | The ids of the authorised keys to install at build time, from `listComputeSshKeys`. ⛔⛔ **Required on the Zinn® Private Cloud range, and the refusal is a security control rather… |
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> | 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 t… |
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'… |
created_at | string | Yes | When the row was created, or `""` when not stated. |
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 an… |
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 `compute… |
Errors this endpoint can return
401 · 403 · 404 · 422 · 429 · 503