Virter – How the "Docker for VMs" Can Help You Test the Linux Kernel
summary
Virter is a CLI front end for libvirt and cloud‑images that treats VM images like layered qcow2 artifacts so teams can pull, provision and push images to Docker registries, start hundreds of clones and attach disks or networks. The company runs ~40,000 VM instances per day, uses VM shed to run integration suites (102 tests per suite) under GitLab CI in about 7 minutes and schedules nightly stability runs that repeat suites ~40× to catch rare flakes. Docker for VMs style image layering and libvirt/qemu integration make cloning and parallel testing fast and space efficient.
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chapters (22)
- 0:00Virter introduction
- 1:02Why we built Virter
- 3:48Linux kernel driver testing
- 5:14VMs aren't enough
- 7:02Docker inspired Virter
- 7:43What is Virter
- 10:12Virter dependencies
- 13:03What Virter is not despite the name
- 14:07Pulling images with Virter
- 15:53Running VMs with Virter
- 17:38Multiple VMs setup
- 19:26Provisioning images
- 21:56Virter features demo
- 22:19Daily kernel driver tests
- 25:11Building test images
- 27:20Virter with GitLab CI
- 28:23Stability tests
- 30:06Conclusion and getting started
- 30:26Q&A: Custom kernels
- 32:14Q&A: Contributing
- 33:37Q&A: Virter vs Vagrant
- 35:00Q&A: Firecracker and licenses
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