Virtual machines

Every VM operation is available from the web UI, the REST API (/api/v1/vms), machinactl and the Terraform provider, all over the same model.

Create

New VM (top bar) walks through name, CPU and memory, disk source and network:

• Disk sources: an ISO, a cloud image with cloud-init, a golden image built by the image pipeline (Packer, mkosi or virt-builder), or an existing volume.
• Cloud-init: user, SSH keys, packages and user-data are injected on first boot.
• Windows: Windows 10/11 golden images through dockur when [libvirt] dockur_windows_allowed = true.
• Atlas storage: put the root disk on a Ceph RBD, NFS or ZFS volume when the Atlas integration is enabled.

Operate

Task	Where
Start, shut down, reboot, force off	VM list row actions or VM detail header
Console	VM detail leads with a live console; noVNC, SPICE, serial and SSH (Consoles)
Change vCPUs, memory, balloon, boot order	VM detail actions
Disks and CD-ROMs	VM detail → Disks (attach, detach, resize, insert ISO)
Networks	VM detail → Network (NICs, bridges, nwfilters)
Devices	VM detail → Devices (GPU and PCI passthrough, USB)
Snapshots	VM detail → Snapshots (create, revert, delete)
Guest policy	VM detail → Guest policy (per-container eBPF policy)
Raw definition	VM detail → XML

Protect

• Snapshots for quick rollback.
• Backups: on demand or nightly with machinactl backup enable; see Upgrade and backup.
• HA: mark a VM HA-protected on the controller and it is restarted elsewhere when its host fails (Controller HA).

Move

• Live migration between hosts in a fleet, from VM detail or the API (a vm.migrate task). FluxVM VMs move the same way when they are QEMU VMs on a shared disk.
• Clone a VM or turn it into a template.
• Import from other platforms with hyper2kvm, checked offline by GuestKit.

Guest agent

With the QEMU guest agent installed, Machina shows guest IPs, filesystems and health, and can freeze filesystems for consistent snapshots. GuestKit adds deeper diagnostics and per-container policy.