nano·cloud
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Install
Nano Cloud runs virtual machines, databases, S3 storage and Kubernetes on a Linux box or a Mac, from one binary with a web console. Open source.
For Linux with KVM on x86-64, and Macs with Apple silicon. Apache-2.0, no telemetry.
Every VM you asked to run comes back after a power cut or a crash, and the activity feed says what happened. Try it on this sample host, which follows the same rules as the real one at twenty times the speed.
PostgreSQL, MySQL, S3 storage, Prometheus with Grafana: each is a recipe that builds its VMs, installs the software and hands you the address and the login.
No containers to manage. The services are ordinary VMs you can open, snapshot and give more disk.
A k3s control plane and two workers, each on its own VM. Download the kubeconfig and use kubectl from your own machine.
Add or remove workers later. Kubernetes owns the containers; Nano Cloud owns the machines.
Take a snapshot, restore it, clone the VM, or save it as a template for the next one. Add disks and grow them.
Disks are files in plain directories you choose as storage pools: qcow2 on Linux, raw images on a Mac.
Hand a VM a PCI device or a USB key, pin it to host CPUs, boot it with UEFI, Secure Boot and a TPM, and put it on your own network, or on a VLAN if your switch has them.
On Linux, through libvirt and KVM. A Mac has none of this: Apple's Virtualization framework gives a VM plain virtual CPUs, always UEFI, on a NAT network. Which network to pick
# the API every page of the UI uses curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $NC_TOKEN" \ https://dev-box:8080/vms [{ "name": "web-01", "phase": "ready", "ip": "192.168.122.14", "cpu_count": 2, "memory_mb": 4096, … }]
Scripts can use the JSON API the web console uses, with tokens you create and revoke in Settings. It is not versioned yet, so a release before 1.0 can change it.
A token reaches everything the web console does, VM consoles included, except changing the password and creating or revoking tokens. Those need a signed-in browser, so a leaked token cannot mint its own replacements.
First, one command on the box.
The installer checks the release's signature, installs libvirt and QEMU from your distribution, starts the service and prints a password.
Then open the address it printed.
HTTPS with a certificate made on your box. Check its fingerprint against the one the installer printed, once, and sign in.
Pick an image, and it boots.
Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Alpine and others, each fetched as its newest build. About a minute later the VM has an address and an SSH line to copy.
One command on the box. The installer checks the release's signature and checksum before anything runs, starts the service, and prints the address and a password.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nanocloud-io/nanocloud/main/install.sh | sudo sh x86-64 with KVM and systemd: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and their relatives. It installs libvirt, QEMU and xorriso from your distribution.
brew install gnupgcurl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nanocloud-io/nanocloud/main/install.sh | sudo sh Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later. gnupg checks the signature; nothing else is installed. What differs on a Mac
sudo nanocloud update
Checks the signature, swaps the binary and rolls back if the new one does not start. VMs keep running.
sudo nanocloud uninstall
Your VMs and their disks stay. Add --purge to
remove everything.
nanocloud doctor
Says what the host is missing and how to add it.
Or install by hand from the release files: nanocloud-linux-amd64, nanocloud-darwin-arm64, sha256sums.txt and its signature. The install guide has the steps, and every release is on GitHub.