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OCI Instance using Marketplace image with Terraform

24-02-2026

When spinning up a compute instance in OCI using Terraform, it is relatively easy to fetch the latest OS image you need and attach to your compute resource in your Terraform script. But when you like to use a pre-defined partner image it gets more complicated. You need to accept the agreements and make sure you have the latest version. In this article Mark Kemper, Infrastructure specialist at MCX, walks you through fetching the image id, accept the agreement and spin up the instance.

In this example we will use the EBS Cloud Manager image provided by the Oracle EBS team in the marketplace of OCI.
Assuming you have all the basic configuration for Terraform we will go ahead. Let's start.
First we fetch everything we need to accept the agreement for the specific image and subscribe to it afterwards.

# Get the listing id out of the data source
data "oci_core_app_catalog_listings" "ebs_cloud_manager" {
    display_name = "Oracle E-Business Suite Cloud Manager"
}

# Get the versions available for the listing
data "oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_versions" "ebs_versions" {
  listing_id = data.oci_core_app_catalog_listing.ebs_cloud_manager.listing_id
}

# Safe the latest version to a local
locals {
  # Get the latest version - it's the FIRST one in the list (index 0)
  latest_version = data.oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_versions.ebs_versions.app_catalog_listing_resource_versions[0].listing_resource_version
}

data "oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version" "ebs_version" {
  listing_id       = data.oci_core_app_catalog_listing.ebs_cloud_manager.listing_id
  resource_version = local.latest_version
}

Now we have all the details fetched in data sources about the image or application listing we will use we van proceed with the agreements.

To accept all the agreements we use resource blocks, this is because underwater we just do API calls. So that is what we are going to do, submit resource blocks in Terraform.

# Accept the license agreement
resource "oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version_agreement" "ebs_agreement" {
  listing_id               = data.oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version.ebs_version.listing_id
  listing_resource_version = data.oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version.ebs_version.listing_resource_version
}

# When accept this, you receive attributes we will use in the next resource block. Now we will subscribe to the image.

resource "oci_core_app_catalog_subscription" "ebs_subscription" {
  compartment_id           = var.tenancy_ocid
  listing_id               = oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version_agreement.ebs_agreement.listing_id
  listing_resource_version = oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version_agreement.ebs_agreement.listing_resource_version
  oracle_terms_of_use_link = oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version_agreement.ebs_agreement.oracle_terms_of_use_link
  signature                = oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version_agreement.ebs_agreement.signature
  time_retrieved           = oci_core_app_catalog_listing_resource_version_agreement.ebs_agreement.time_retrieved
}

Now we have the subscription ready for the marketplace image. When submitted this you receive attributes from Terraform. You can use one of those attributes as the image for your compute. You will feed it to the source_details in the compute resource.

# Snippet of the compute resource
resource "oci_core_instance" "compute" {
  display_name   = var.name
  availability_domain = var.availability_domain
  compartment_id = var.compartment
  shape          = var.shape
  shape_config {
    ocpus = var.ocpu
    memory_in_gbs = var.memory
  }
  source_details {
    source_type = "image"
    source_id   = oci_core_app_catalog_subscription.ebs_subscription.listing_resource_id
    boot_volume_size_in_gbs = var.bootvolsize
  }

Make sure that you do this for every marketplace image you would like to use, because every image has a license agreement and needs to be subscribed to.

This is all you need to use a marketplace image in Terraform. See you next time!

Mark Kempers, Infrastructure specialist MCX

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