LXD – System Container Manager

LXD is a next-generation system container and virtual machine manager. It offers a unified experience for running Linux system containers and VMs, providing security, scalability, and ease of use.

Key Features

• System Containers: Full Linux system in containers
• Virtual Machines: KVM-based VM support
• Clustering: Multi-node deployment
• Storage: ZFS, Btrfs, LVM support
• REST API: Full programmatic control

Installation

Install LXD on Ubuntu:

sudo snap install lxd
sudo lxd init

Usage Examples

Common LXD operations:

# Launch container
lxc launch ubuntu:22.04 mycontainer

# Launch VM
lxc launch ubuntu:22.04 myvm --vm

# Execute command
lxc exec mycontainer -- apt update

# Access shell
lxc shell mycontainer

# Snapshot
lxc snapshot mycontainer backup1

# Copy between hosts
lxc copy mycontainer remote:newcontainer

Benefits

LXD provides cloud-like container management on any scale. Its image-based workflow and clustering support enable production-grade container infrastructure.

Download LXD