Incus is a manager for system containers, application containers and virtual machines. It provides a consistent way to create and operate isolated workloads locally or on remote servers through its command-line client, REST API and web interface.
System containers run complete Linux user spaces while sharing the host kernel. Application containers are intended for individual applications and can be created from images stored in OCI-compatible registries such as Docker Hub. Virtual machines provide a separate kernel when stronger isolation or a different workload model is required. These instance types can be managed through the same Incus infrastructure.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Manage system containers, OCI application containers and virtual machines from one platform.
- Image-based workflow with local images, remote image servers and automatic caching.
- Consume application-container images from OCI-compatible registries.
- Profiles for applying reusable configuration to groups of instances.
- Projects for separating instances, images, profiles, storage and networking between users or workloads.
- Snapshots, backup and recovery for managed resources.
- Move or copy instances and images between Incus servers.
- Multiple storage backends with configurable storage pools and volumes.
- Network management including bridges and other managed network types.
- Fine-grained CPU, memory, disk and network resource controls.
- Device passthrough for GPUs, USB devices, network interfaces, disks and other host resources.
- Clustering for managing groups of Incus servers as a single deployment.
- Local and remote administration use the same API model.
Website: linuxcontainers.org/incus
Support:
Developer: Stéphane Graber, Tom Parrott, and many other contributors
License: Apache License 2.0
Incus is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
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| Cruise | Docker TUI client |
| Cloudmin | Manage virtual systems running virtualization technology |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Virtualization Tools | |
|---|---|
| VirtualBox | Powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization software |
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| Quickgui | Gaphical user interface for the Quickemu virtual machine manager. |
| Kudu | Create and manage QEMU virtual machines from the terminal |
| Cockpit Machines | Web interface for managing virtual machines |
| Cassowary | Run Windows virtual machine on Linux |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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