LXD is a unified platform for managing both system containers and virtual machines through a single REST API and command-line interface. It provides a programmatic HTTP interface for controlling the full lifecycle of instances, enabling automation and integration with external tools. The system runs unprivileged containers with per-instance UID/GID mappings, seccomp filters, and AppArmor profiles for kernel-level isolation, while supporting multiple storage backends including directory, Btrfs, LVM, ZFS, Ceph, LINSTOR, and TrueNAS through a unified driver interface.
The platform distinguishes itself through its distributed system architecture, using Raft consensus for fault-tolerant cluster operations, OVN for software-defined networking, and CRIU for live migration of running containers. It supports multi-server cluster formation with automatic instance placement, load balancing, member evacuation, and database replication across members. The system includes a built-in DNS server with automatic forward and reverse record management, BGP route advertisement, and integration with systemd-resolved for instance name resolution.
LXD provides comprehensive security and access control features including TLS certificate authentication, OpenID Connect integration, ACL-based traffic filtering, and user namespace isolation for secure multi-tenant operations. It offers extensive configuration and extensibility through a key-value configuration system for daemon, instance, and project settings, supporting profiles, cloud-init, device passthrough, and infrastructure-as-code provisioning via a dedicated Terraform or OpenTofu provider. The platform includes full lifecycle management for images, including import, export, caching, aliasing, and distribution across cluster members, along with point-in-time snapshot and backup mechanisms for instances and storage volumes.
The system is available as modular binary packages for daemon, client, and optional tools, with support for multiple architectures and deployment from single machines to full data center racks.
LXD is a unified platform for managing both system containers and virtual machines through a single REST API and command-line interface. It provides a programmatic HTTP interface for controlling the full lifecycle of instances, enabling automation and integration with external tools. The system runs unprivileged containers with per-instance UID/GID mappings, seccomp filters, and AppArmor profiles for kernel-level isolation, while supporting multiple storage backends…
Die Hauptfunktionen von lxc/lxd sind: System Container Manager Installations, Unified Container and VM Platforms, DHCP and DNS Services, Node Evacuations, Storage Driver Abstractions, Instance Groupings into Projects, Distributed SQLite Replications, Cluster-Wide Shared Storage.
Open-Source-Alternativen zu lxc/lxd sind unter anderem: lxc/incus — Incus is a unified orchestration platform for managing system containers, OCI application containers, and virtual… canonical/lxd — LXD is a system container manager and virtual machine manager that provides a unified interface for running full Linux… trapexit/mergerfs — mergerfs is a FUSE-based union filesystem that pools multiple independent filesystems or directories into a single… superradcompany/microsandbox — Microsandbox is a runtime for creating and managing lightweight, hardware-isolated virtual machines — called sandboxes… gluster/glusterfs — GlusterFS is a software-defined distributed file system and scale-out storage cluster that aggregates disk resources… openzfs/zfs — ZFS is an enterprise-grade file system and logical volume manager that integrates storage pooling with advanced data…
Incus is a unified orchestration platform for managing system containers, OCI application containers, and virtual machines through a single control plane. It brings together cluster infrastructure management, secure multi-tenancy, software-defined networking, and pluggable storage backend orchestration into one cohesive system exposed via a full REST API and command-line interface. What distinguishes Incus is its ability to run multiple instance types side by side—full Linux system containers, OCI application containers, and QEMU virtual machines—all managed with consistent tooling. Networkin
LXD is a system container manager and virtual machine manager that provides a unified interface for running full Linux systems. It acts as a container cluster orchestrator, an image format converter, and an infrastructure manager that exposes control through a REST API and language-specific SDKs. The project distinguishes itself by providing a unified container and virtual machine abstraction, treating both as generic instances within a single management layer. It supports distributed cluster coordination to synchronize state and distribute workloads across multiple physical nodes. The syste
Microsandbox is a runtime for creating and managing lightweight, hardware-isolated virtual machines — called sandboxes — that boot directly from standard OCI container images. Each sandbox runs as its own host process with a separate kernel, filesystem, and network stack, providing process-per-sandbox isolation. The project includes a command-line tool and multi-language SDKs (Rust, TypeScript, Python, Go) for programmatic lifecycle control, and it communicates with sandbox agents over Unix sockets using a CBOR-encoded protocol. What distinguishes Microsandbox is its combination of host-manag
mergerfs is a FUSE-based union filesystem that pools multiple independent filesystems or directories into a single unified mount point. It acts as a proxy to underlying storage, forwarding file operations directly to the filesystem for near-native performance while merging directory listings and attribute changes. The project provides a live, read-write pooled view of storage that aggregates drives of any size without requiring reformatting or data redistribution, and it isolates individual drive failures so that the pool continues serving data from remaining filesystems. The filesystem offer