hv
Virtual machines on Xen, administered over a console, CLI, API and MCP server.
What hv is
hv is a distribution for running and administering virtual machines on Xen. A Host runs Xen 4.22, Alpine Linux 3.24 in the control domain, the upstream xapi toolstack and hv-agent. The control domain, called dom0, manages the physical hardware and the VM lifecycle.
hv adds a web console, CLI, JSON API, MCP server, installer, storage plugins and update tools. Its own management components are written in OCaml.
Requirements
- An x86_64 CPU with hardware virtualization enabled in the firmware.
- UEFI mode boot; legacy BIOS Host boot is not supported.
- At least 37,378 MiB on the disk the installer erases and installs to.
- An IOMMU (Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi) is optional: PCI/GPU and SR-IOV passthrough need it, USB passthrough does not.
Download
The hv installer is a bootable ISO: write it to a USB stick or mount it as virtual media, and select UEFI boot.