Hypervisor — your own private cloud.

A hypervisor is a machine that runs other machines. Instead of one OS per box, you run many — each isolated, each with its own kernel, each thinking it has the hardware to itself. This is how every cloud provider works. Now it's your turn.

What you'll build

The recipe

# Start with a kldload server install, then:

# Install hypervisor packages
kpkg install qemu-system-x86 libvirt-daemon-system virtinst \
             ovmf bridge-utils virt-manager

# Enable and start libvirt
systemctl enable --now libvirtd

# Create a ZFS dataset for VM storage
kdir -o compression=lz4 /srv/vms

# Create a zvol for your first VM (40GB thin-provisioned)
zfs create -V 40G -s rpool/srv/vms/my-first-vm

# Install a VM from ISO
virt-install \
  --name my-first-vm \
  --ram 4096 --vcpus 4 \
  --disk /dev/zvol/rpool/srv/vms/my-first-vm \
  --cdrom /srv/isos/debian-13-netinst.iso \
  --os-variant debian13 \
  --network default \
  --graphics vnc

# Snapshot before doing anything risky
zfs snapshot rpool/srv/vms/my-first-vm@clean-install

# Clone the VM instantly (CoW — uses zero extra space)
zfs clone rpool/srv/vms/my-first-vm@clean-install rpool/srv/vms/my-second-vm

What you'll learn