Install and configure the Virt task driver

Beta Feature: The Virt task driver is in beta and under active development. Refer to the repo README for the latest updates. Do not use this driver in production environments.

The Virt task driver plugin for Linux operating systems is not bundled with Nomad. You must install the driver into each Nomad client's configured plugin directory.

Your Nomad client must meet these requirements:

Run as root.
Able to run hardware-accelerated KVM virtual machines. Run the kvm-ok command to verify your client capabilities.

The Virt driver requires the following packages:

bridge-utils
cloudinit
dnsmasq
iptables
libvirt daemon
QEMU

Install the Virt driver

Download a precompiled binary and verify the binary using the available SHA-256 sums. Unzip the package. Make sure that the nomad-driver-virt binary is on your plugin_dir path, specified by the client's config file, before continuing with the other guides.

Install the required packages.

$ sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install -y \
  wget \
  gpg \
  coreutils \
  bridge-utils \
  cloud-init \
  dnsmasq \
  iptables \
  libvirt-daemon-system \
  qemu-system \
  qemu-system-x86 \
  qemu-utils

Add the HashiCorp [GPG key][gpg-key].

$ wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg

Add the official HashiCorp Linux test repository.

$ echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) test" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list

Update and install.

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nomad-driver-virt

Install yum-config-manager to manage your repositories.

$ sudo yum install -y yum-utils

Use yum-config-manager to add the official HashiCorp Linux repository.

$ sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://rpm.releases.hashicorp.com/RHEL/hashicorp.repo

Edit the repo file at /etc/yum.repos.d/hashicorp.repo and set enabled=1 for [hashicorp-test].

Install.

$ sudo yum -y install nomad-driver-virt

Configure the Virt driver as a plugin

This example shows the default plugin configuration.

plugin "nomad-driver-driver" {
  config {
    data_dir     = "/var/lib/virt"
    image_paths  = ["/var/lib/virt", "${ALLOC_DIR}"]

    emulator {
      uri      = "qemu:///system"
      user     = ""
      password = ""
    }
  }
}

data_dir - (default: "/var/lib/virt") - the directory for storing VM configuration files and intermediate files.
image_paths - (default: ["/var/lib/virt", "${ALLOC_DIR}"]) - an allow-list of paths the driver is allowed to load an image from.
emulator - (block)
- uri - (default: "qemu:///system") - The uri specifies which hypervisor to connect to.
- user - (default: "") - the username to use for authentication.
- password - (default: "") - the password to use for authentication.

Next steps

Learn how to use the Virt task driver in your Nomad job specification.