💡 Need help deploying or extending this? → hello@volantvm.com

The modular microVM orchestration engine.

Volant lets you spin up fully isolated microVMs as easily as running a container — with real kernels, VFIO passthrough, and cloud-init built in.

Volant turns microVMs into a first-class runtime surface. The project ships a control plane, CLI, and agent that speak a common image manifest so teams can run secure, stateful workloads without stitching together networking, scheduling, and lifecycle plumbing themselves.

Runtime-specific behavior lives in signed manifests and their associated artifacts. The core engine stays lean while image authors ship the kernels/initramfs overlays and workload processes their runtime requires. Operators decide which manifests to install and must reference one whenever a VM is created.

Together with fledge — the artifact builder — Volant provides a complete solution for building and deploying microVMs with custom applications embedded in initramfs, or with the regular OCI images we are familiar with.

Cloud-init support makes Volant ideal for dev sandboxes, while VFIO passthrough allows for isolation of GPU and AI workloads.

Volant ships with sensible defaults out of the box, lowering the barrier to entry while keeping full configurability for power users

However, Volant is built to be modular, scriptable and configurable beyond those defaults, and advanced users can customize it to their own needs.

For instance, the Kestrel agent acts as a robust PID1 and is responsible for setting up the guest environment in multiple scenarios, and also acts as a secure proxy to workloads inside network-isolated VMs over vsock, providing a frictionless path to maximum isolation.

If you require more fine-grained control, it is possible to override the kernel paths and the fledge artifact builder has configuration settings for using your own init. Refer to the documentation for more details.

Volant provides:

• volantd — Control plane (SQLite registry + VM orchestration)

• volar — CLI for managing VMs and images

• kestrel — In-guest agent & init (PID 1)

• fledge — Image builder (OCI images → bootable artifacts)

Two paths, same workflow:

1. Rootfs strategy — Convert OCI images to bootable disk images (Docker compatibility)
2. Initramfs strategy — Build custom appliances from scratch (maximum performance)

Spin up your first microVM in under a minute.

# This installs volar (CLI), volantd (control plane), kestrel (guest agent),
# and default kernels to /var/lib/volant/kernel.
# By default, setup creates a bridge (vbr0) at 192.168.127.1/24.

curl -fsSL https://get.volantvm.com | bash

Tip: To inspect or customize network setup later:

sudo volar setup --help

If you prefer to skip automatic setup and handle networking yourself:

curl -fsSL https://get.volantvm.com | bash -s -- --skip-setup

Let's start with a Caddy initramfs image (initramfs-image-example)

volar images install --manifest \
  https://github.com/volantvm/initramfs-image-example/releases/latest/download/caddy.json

volar vms create web --image caddy --cpu 2 --memory 512

Check it's alive:

curl 192.168.127.10
# → Hello from Caddy in a Volant microVM! 🚀

This example runs NGINX directly from the official Docker image:

volar images install --manifest \
  https://github.com/volantvm/oci-image-example/releases/latest/download/nginx.json

volar vms create my-nginx --image nginx --cpu 1 --memory 1024
curl http://192.168.127.11

cat > web-config.json <<'EOF'
{
  "image": "caddy",
  "resources": {
    "cpu_cores": 2,
    "memory_mb": 512
  }
}
EOF

volar deployments create web-cluster \
  --config web-config.json \
  --replicas 5

Result: 5 isolated microVMs, each with its own kernel, IP, and lifecycle management.

Done — you've just deployed a replicated microVM cluster with real kernel isolation, no YAMLs, and zero boilerplate.

Use fledge to build custom images from OCI images or static binaries.

Examples:

• initramfs-image-example — Caddy web server (fast boot, minimal size)
• oci-image-example — NGINX from Docker image (Docker compatibility)

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Host Machine               │
│  ┌───────────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │    volantd (Control Plane)        │  │
│  │  • SQLite registry                │  │
│  │  • IPAM (192.168.127.0/24)        │  │
│  │  • Cloud Hypervisor orchestration │  │
│  │  • REST + MCP APIs                │  │
│  └───────────────┬───────────────────┘  │
│                  │                       │
│  ┌───────────────▼───────────────────┐  │
│  │     Bridge Network (vbr0)         │  │
│  └┬────────┬────────┬────────┬───────┘  │
│   │        │        │        │           │
│  ┌▼──┐   ┌▼──┐   ┌▼──┐   ┌▼──┐         │
│  │VM1│   │VM2│   │VM3│   │VMN│         │
│  │┌──┐   │┌──┐   │┌──┐   │┌──┐         │
│  ││   │││   │││   │││         │
│  │└──┘   │└──┘   │└──┘   │└──┘         │
│  └───┘   └───┘   └───┘   └───┘         │
│   kestrel agents (PID 1)                │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Kernel and boot:

• Each Volant release ships verifiably-built kernels: bzImage (compressed) and vmlinux (uncompressed ELF)
• Both contain the same embedded initramfs with kestrel agent and C init
• Embedded init handles both boot paths: stays in initramfs for appliance workloads, or pivots to rootfs for OCI-based workloads
• bzImage used by default; vmlinux available for power users who need the uncompressed format
• SHA256 checksums + build provenance attestation for all artifacts

• CORS: set VOLANT_CORS_ORIGINS="http://localhost:3000,https://app.example.com" to enable browser-based UIs
• IP allowlist: VOLANT_API_ALLOW_CIDR="127.0.0.1/32,192.168.0.0/16"
• API key: VOLANT_API_KEY=... then send header X-Volant-API-Key: <key>
• System summary: GET /api/v1/system/summary
• VM list with filters/pagination: GET /api/v1/vms?status=running&runtime=browser&image=caddy&q=web&limit=20&offset=0&sort=created_at&order=desc (returns X-Total-Count)
• Console WebSocket: GET ws://<host>/ws/v1/vms/:name/console (raw serial bridge)
• Image artifacts API:
  • List: GET /api/v1/images/:image/artifacts?version=v1
  • Upsert: POST /api/v1/images/:image/artifacts
  • Delete: DELETE /api/v1/images/:image/artifacts?version=v1

VM-level device overrides (VFIO):

{
  "devices": {
    "vfio": ["0000:01:00.0", "0000:01:00.1"]
  }
}

Apply with PATCH /api/v1/vms/:name/config or via volar config patching.

• Secure multi-tenancy — True hardware isolation
• Edge computing — Minimal footprint, fast boot
• CI/CD — Ephemeral test environments
• Development — Local Kubernetes-style orchestration
• High-density workloads — 50-100 VMs per host
• AI/ML Run machine learning workloads in isolation

Full documentation: docs.volantvm.com

Quick links:

• Why Volant
• Installation Guide
• Quick Starts · Rootfs
• Networking · Cloud-init · Deployments · GPU
• Image Development · Initramfs · OCI Rootfs
• Architecture Overview
• Reference: Manifest · fledge.toml · manifest.toml · CLI · OpenAPI
• Contributing · Security

See ROADMAP.md for the full vision.

2025 Q3-Q4: VFIO GPU passthrough — Native GPU support for AI/ML workloads

• 2025 Q4: PaaS mode — serverless-like workloads, boot from snapshot
• 2025 Q4: Multi-node clustering support

• GitHub: github.com/volantvm/volant
• Discord: (coming soon)
• Email: hello@volantvm.com

Contributing: See contributing

Business Source License 1.1 — free for personal, educational, and internal use. Commercial hosting or resale requires a license from HYPR PTE. LTD. Converts to Apache 2.0 on October 4, 2029.

See LICENSE for full terms.

Volant — Designed for stealth, speed, and scale.

© 2025 HYPR PTE. LTD.