Cloud Hypervisor
An open source virtual machine monitor written in Rust for running modern cloud workloads on KVM.
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About Cloud Hypervisor
Cloud Hypervisor is a virtual machine monitor focused on modern cloud workloads with minimal hardware emulation. It runs Linux and Windows guests on x86-64 and aarch64, can boot to userspace in under 100ms with direct kernel boot, and supports paravirtualised devices, device passthrough and live migration.
VMs are controlled through a REST API, and Kata Containers can use it to run containers in lightweight VMs. It is governed as a Linux Foundation project and suits people building VM infrastructure rather than desktop users.
Strengths
- Small attack surface with few emulated devices, written in Rust
- Fast boot and low memory overhead
- REST API, live migration and device passthrough
- Supported by Kata Containers
Limitations
- No graphical interface; built for infrastructure and automation
- Not aimed at legacy guests that need broad hardware emulation
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source under the Linux Foundation.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- The Cloud Hypervisor contributors
- Platforms
- Linux, Command line
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Best suited for
- Running dense, secure cloud VMs or Kata Containers on Linux hosts
- Categories
- Virtual machines, Container tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Cloud Hypervisor
Compare allSoftware that can replace Cloud Hypervisor for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Firecracker
Run isolated workloads inside lightweight Linux microVMs.
Firecracker runs lightweight Linux microVMs for container and function workloads under the Apache-2.0 license, and it likewise needs Linux virtualization support and low-level configuration.
crosvm
A hosted virtual machine monitor written in Rust that runs guest operating systems inside sandboxed virtual devices.
crosvm is another Rust VMM on KVM that isolates each virtual device in its own sandbox, and you supply your own kernel and root file system image.
QEMU
The machine emulator and virtualiser that most of the Linux virtualisation stack is built on.
QEMU emulates a much wider range of hardware and architectures, suiting legacy guests, but raw QEMU has a large and unfriendly command line option surface.
krunvm
A command-line tool that creates lightweight microVMs from OCI container images using libkrun.
krunvm creates lightweight microVMs directly from OCI container images using libkrun, runs on Linux and macOS, and is not open source.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Kata Containers
An open-source container runtime that runs each container inside a lightweight virtual machine for stronger isolation.
KVM
The Linux kernel's built-in hypervisor for hardware-accelerated virtual machines.
libvirt
A toolkit, daemon and API for managing KVM, QEMU, Xen, LXC and other virtualization platforms.
KubeVirt
A Kubernetes add-on that runs and manages traditional virtual machines alongside containers.
