Virshle: A Virtual Machine Manager.

Virshle is a single command line utility to manage multiple virtual machines.

• It works on top of cloud-hypervisor and linux-kvm for machines virtualization,
• Makes extensive use of openvswitch for network configuration.
• Use pipelight-init for fast vm provisioning on boot.

Warning

Early development stage. Multinode is not stable.

Getting started.

Virshle is a cli(client) that can control multiple nodes(servers) that manage multiple vm(virtual machine) themselves.

So before creating a vm, you'll have to spin up a node first.

┌──────┬──────┐
│      │      │
│      │      │
│ vm_1 │ vm_2 │
│      │      │
│      │      │
├──────┴──────┴──────┐
│   node             │
└─────▲──────────────┘
      │
      │
      │
┌─────┴───┐
│         │
│   cli   │
│         │
└─────────┘

Start a local node.

It is what you want for fast and easy vm creation on your local machine.

The following command creates the required resources on host:

• filesystem paths(/var/lib/virshle) and config path (/etc/virshle),
• vm database(/var/lib/virshle.sqlite),
• client-server communication socket(/var/lib/virshle.sock),
• and host network configuration (ovs-system and br0 switches)

virshle node init --all

Then run the virshle node daemon.

virshle node serve -vvv

Connect to your local node.

When running a node on your local machine, the cli automatically connects to the local node without further configuration.

While listing available nodes, your local node appears with the name default.

virshle node ls -vvv

Create a VM.

The preferred way to create VMs with virshle is by the usage of templates.

You add some template definitions into the configuration file. A functional machine needs at least :

• A bootable OS disk (mandatory),
• Some cpu,
• Some ram,

See the template below that defines a small machine preset named xs.

# /etc/virshle/config.toml

[[template.vm]]
name = "xs"
vcpu = 1
vram = 2

[[template.vm.disk]]
name = "os"
path = "~/Iso/nixos.efi.img"
# or
# path = "/var/lib/virshle/cache/nixos.efi.img"

[[template.vm.net]]
name = "main"
[template.vm.net.type.macvtap]

Then only can you create a machine from that template.

v vm create -t xs

List your VMs and associated information.

v vm ls

Then start your vm.

# Pattern
v vm start --id <vm_id> --attach

Start and provision a VM.

You need to provide the vm with user_data such as an ssh public key for remote access.

Here for we do not use the now conventional cloud-init, but rather pipelight-init which shines when it comes to provisioning speed.

You can add user data to the Vm on creation or upon start up.

• From a simple file.

# user-data.toml
[ssh]
[[ssh.user]]
name = "anon"
authorized_keys = [
  "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzXXX",
]

• With the following command

# Pattern
v vm create --template <template_name> --user_data <user_data_filepath>
v vm start --id <vm_id>

# or
v vm create --template <template_name>
v vm start --id <vm_id> --user_data <user_data_filepath>

# Example
v vm create --template xs --user_data user_data.toml
#or
v vm start --id 1 --user_data user_data.toml

Then, you can access your via ssh:

• On your local node and without any network configuration (vsock),

  ssh vm/<vm_name>

• with network,

  Add a network configuration to the vm template

  # /etc/virshle/config.toml
  [[template.vm.net]]
  name = "main"
  [template.vm.net.type.macvtap]

  v vm create -t <template_name>

  v vm start --id <vm_id>

  With the vm_ip,

  ssh <vm_ip>

  With the vm_name, depends on your dhcp/dns configuration.

  ssh vm-name.vm

Access your VM

Either attach the vm to a terminal standard outputs.

v vm start --id <vm_id> --attach

Other configurations

• Custom disk images, See docs/custom_disk.md

• Multiple nodes, Configure a cluster of multiple nodes. See docs/multi_node.md

• Network configuration, Different network configurations. See docs/network.md

Install

NixOs (with flakes).

Add the repo url to your flake inputs.

# flake.nix
inputs = {
  virshle = {
      url = "github:pipelight/virshle";
  };
};

Add the module to your configuration.

nixosConfiguration = {
    default = pkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        modules = [
            inputs.acceptxmr.nixosModules.default
        ];
    };
}

Enable the service.

# default.nix
services.virshle = {
    enable = true;
    logLevel = "info";
    # The user to run the node as.
    user = "anon";
};

Build a disk image.

Minimal image

Custom image

You can of course create custom disk image by importing the base module onto a vm configuration.

xxs = inputs.nixos-generators.nixosGenerate {
  format = "raw-efi";
  modules = [
    inputs.virshle.nixosModule.nixos-generators
    {virtualisation.diskSize = 20 * 1024;}
    # Add your modules
    ./my/custom/config

  ];
};

See docs/install.md for in depth nixos installation and other distributions.

Alternatives

Similar software can be found at:

• libvirt applications,
• multipass
• aurae

If you want VM for specific usage like workload isolation, some hypervisors may suit you better:

• Firecracker,
• CrosVm