VMS

An opinionated and simple cli suite for creating and destroying VMs, in my homelab, from cloud images and cloud-init with libvirt and KVM.

Why did I build this

The whole libvirt/kvm/qemu ecosystem is quite flexible and powerful. It, like many long running opensource ecosystems, suffers from a huge amount of old, out of date documentation on the internet.

I needed a simple way to spin VMs up and down in my homelab without having to search for the various commands and nuances for each guest OS type.

Dependencies

• a Linux based host running libvirt and kvm
• ability to resolve static dns for new VMs (I switched off the libvirt/dnsmasq integration)
• a user that is in the libvirt group
• jq, virsh, virt-install and qemu-img installed and available in the $PATH

Opinions

I built this for my homelab to be able to simply spin up and down VMs.

• public cloud images in qcow2 format
• cloud-init (not available for editing before creating a VM)
• Network options:
  • VM on NAT interface using DHCP (default) OR
  • VM on bridge interface using DHCP
  • VM on bridge interface with static IP
• new standalone qcow2 image per VM

This is only tested with the following combination:

• Single, Ubuntu 20.04 (x86_64) server install as a KVM host
• a single NIC bridged to the local LAN
• directory based storage volume pools

Note: I built my homelab with aussielunix/vmlab (coming soon)

Installation

Run the following and further, optional instructions will follow.

bin/vms init

Usage

vms is a cli suite with sub commands. It has documentation and command completion built in to help you learn about all the options and their defaults.

[user@vm]  (main) -> vms commands
[user@vm]  (main) -> vms help
[user@vm]  (main) -> vms help new

First, you need to setup templates of the Cloud Images.

[user@vm]  (main) -> vms sync ubuntu
[user@vm]  (main) -> vms sync debian10
[user@vm]  (main) -> vms sync debian11

To get a new Ubuntu Focal (20.04 LTS) server VM with a static IP of 192.168.20.77 using the sane defaults for all other options:

[user@vm]  (main) -> vms new -n mynewvm -i 77
Creating new ubuntu20.04 VM - mynewvm
Type virsh console mynewvm to see when it is finished being created.

To get a new Debian 11 server VM on the NAT bridge, using the sane defaults for all other options:

[user@vm]  (main) -> vms new -n mynewvm -o debian11
Creating new debian11 VM - mynewvm
virsh console mynewvm to see when it is finished being created.
[user@vm]  (main) -> ssh mynewvm

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.

• Fork this repository
• Create a branch: git checkout -b <branch_name>
• Push your branch: git push -u origin <branch_name>
• Create a pull request with WIP at the start of the subject
• Make your changes and commit them: git commit -m '<commit_message>'
• Push to your branch: git push
• Edit pull request and remove WIP from the title and comment it is ready for review

Contributors

Thanks to the following people who have contributed to this project:

• @aussielunix 🤠

Credit

This command suite was built quickly using the great sub.

License

The is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.