Holos – QEMU/KVM with a compose-style YAML, GPUs and health checks

In plain words

Holos is a QEMU/KVM runtime for managing single-host VM stacks using YAML configuration similar to Docker Compose. It simplifies VM management by eliminating libvirt XML complexity and includes GPU passthrough support, health checks that control service dependencies, inter-VM networking without root privileges, cloud-init integration, and Docker-based provisioning. Designed for developers who need local multi-VM environments rather than clustered infrastructure, it operates as a prototype on individual hardware without clustering, live migration, or orchestration features.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

docker compose for kvm/qemu. Contribute to zeroecco/holos development by creating an account on GitHub.

Docker compose for KVM. Define multi-VM stacks in one YAML file. No libvirt, no XML, no distributed control plane. The primitive is a VM, not a container. Every workload instance gets its own kernel boundary, qcow2 overlay, cloud-init seed, and generated SSH access. Requires Linux + /dev/kvm . macOS builds run offline commands like validate , import , images , and pull , but up and run need a KVM host. holos run alpine holos exec < printed-project-name > holos down < printed-project-name > A single-service stack you can curl . Save as holos.yaml : name : hello services : web : image : ubuntu:noble ports : - " 8080:80 " cloud_init : packages : - nginx write_files : - path :…from github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

I got tired of libvirt XML and Vagrant's Ruby&#x2F;reload dance for single-host VM stacks, so I built a compose-style runtime directly on QEMU&#x2F;KVM. What's there: GPU passthrough as a first-class primitive (VFIO, OVMF, per-instance EFI vars), healthchecks that gate depends_on over SSH, socket-multicast L2 between…

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