Open source · Apache 2.0

A single pane of glass for your KVM hypervisor fleet.

Inventory, live + offline migrations, snapshots, VNC consoles, mTLS between hosts, signed per-migration grants, in-app docs, Influx-backed metrics — all in one Go binary and a tiny agent.

Get started View source

kvm-center full UI tour — dashboard, hosts, VMs, snapshots, storage, migrations, System Health, docs

Why kvm-center

Run KVM at any scale without an appliance, a license, or 50 SSH sessions.

Running KVM directly is great. Running ten of them is a chore. kvm-center gives you the central control surface KVM deserves — and ships as a single binary.

One server, many hypervisors

A stateless Go control plane and a ~7 MB agent per host. MongoDB for persistence, nothing else.

Migrations that just work

Live or offline, over native qemu+tls:// with Ed25519-signed per-migration grants. No SSH key sprawl, no shared NFS assumed.

Snapshots, consoles, metrics

Per-VM snapshot timelines, in-browser VNC, InfluxDB line-protocol metrics with a downloadable Grafana dashboard.

Auth that fits your org

Local users, API tokens, LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and 2FA — all in the same binary, configurable from the SPA.

Docs that ship with the code

server/docs/*.md is embedded and rendered in-app. The Help icon in the top bar is how your operators learn the product.

Signed releases, end to end

Cosign-signed Docker images, GPG-signed appliance qcow2 + SHA256SUMS. Public keys versioned in the repo.

What's in the box

Dashboard

Fleet-wide CPU / memory / storage rollup, health pills per host, recent migrations.

Hosts

Per-hypervisor telemetry, mTLS enrollment state, storage pools, network bridges.

VMs

Start, stop, restart, migrate, snapshot, console — sortable, searchable, bulk-selectable.

Migrations

Live + offline, transport toggle, advanced modal for pool picker, VM rename, MAC regen.

Snapshots

Per-VM timelines, fleet-wide snapshot overview, create / revert / delete.

Metrics

Influx v2 sink, Grafana dashboard JSON served from /api/grafana/dashboard.json.

Audit

Every state-changing action, filterable, shippable to syslog or HTTP.

kvmctl

Cross-platform CLI for scripting against the same API.

Get started in minutes

Three install paths. Same kvm-center.

Pick on convenience, not lock-in. Switching later is "point the new install at the same Mongo and shut the old one down."

Smallest possible footprint. Multi-arch image (amd64 + arm64). Cosign-signed every release. Apple silicon Macs pull arm64 natively.

docker run -d --name kvm-center -p 8190:8443 \
  -v kvm-center-data:/var/lib/kvm-center \
  -e KVM_CENTER_PUBLIC_URL=https://localhost:8190 \
  thedon21/kvm-center:latest

Open https://localhost:8190, accept the cert, walk the captive setup wizard. Need MongoDB persistence? See the docker-compose recipe.

Pre-built qcow2 + GPG-signed checksums on GitHub Releases. Rocky Linux 9 minimal, MongoDB + kvm-center pre-installed, first-boot generates a random admin password.

V=v5.49.5
gh release download "$V" --repo donovanm21/kvmcenter \
  --pattern 'kvm-center-appliance-*.qcow2' \
  --pattern 'SHA256SUMS*'
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc SHA256SUMS && sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

sudo cp kvm-center-appliance-${V}.qcow2 /var/lib/libvirt/images/
sudo virt-install --name kvm-center --memory 2048 --vcpus 2 \
  --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/kvm-center-appliance-${V}.qcow2,bus=virtio \
  --import --os-variant rocky9 --network bridge=virbr0 --noautoconsole

Then sudo virsh console kvm-center — the banner shows the URL and admin password. Full flow incl. signature verification in the appliance docs.

For custom OS, ops shops with config-management, or hosts that already have everything they need. Interactive installer walks you through Mongo creds, cluster DNS, and writes .env mode 0600.

git clone https://github.com/donovanm21/kvmcenter /opt/kvm-center
cd /opt/kvm-center
scripts/bootstrap.sh --interactive

Stack comes up on port 8190. Skip the TUI with scripts/bootstrap.sh --deploy for CI flows. Full walkthrough in Getting started.

How it fits together

Stateless control plane. Tiny agents. Zero dependencies you don't already run.

The kvm-center-server runs anywhere a Go binary runs and talks HTTPS to a ~7 MB agent on each hypervisor. East-west traffic between hosts uses native qemu+tls:// with Ed25519-signed migration grants — no SSH key sprawl, no shared NFS, no second control plane.

State lives in MongoDB. Optional Influx + Grafana for metrics. Auth plugs into whatever IdP you already trust (LDAP, SAML, OIDC) or runs standalone with local users + 2FA.

Read the architecture docs

Browser ─── :8190 ──▶  kvm-center-server (Go)
                       │   HTTPS · session / bearer
                       ▼
                  MongoDB persistence
                       ▲
                       │   HTTPS
                       ▼
           ┌────────────┬────────────┐
           │            │            │
        hv01:8081    hv02:8081    hv03:8081
        (kvm-center-agent systemd)
           ↕            ↕            ↕
           └── qemu+tls :16514 (east-west) ──┘
                signed grants · libvirt hook enforced