Hi ztoth,   The API doesn't support referencing an existing instance template when creating a new deployment through it. The entire instance template for the manager instance must be spelled out. To make this easier, you can GET the template for an existing deployment (not the deployment itself, but its template) that uses the desired instance template, and then copy out the details from the returned JSON.   Going further, you can edit the JSON from that existing deployment template into what you POST for the new one, essentially rolling your own clone operation. If you do this, be sure to update the rest of the template to make it properly independent of the original: change the name of the deployment, change the ID for the manager virtual instance, update any bootstrap scripts, fill in the license and billing ID if used, and update database names and credentials for any pre-existing external databases.   If you're also looking at reusing an external database server, once it's created it can be referenced inside external database templates and (existing) external databases in new deployment templates by its name, and it will be used as expected. ... View more

For real installations, you should pull from a repository.  This will ensure all the nodes in your CDSW cluster have access to the image, not just the node where you built it.  Moreover, you should not assume that your Docker image store is persistent across upgrades or in long-running clusters where we may evict less used images to free space. By pushing your custom images to a repository, you will ensure that images are never deleted due to image eviction policies or other administration tasks. ... View more