pve-microvm-template

pve-microvm-template

pve-microvm-template is a helper script shipped by the pve-microvm Debian package, an experimental add-on that brings QEMU's microvm machine type to Proxmox VE. Running it once pulls a minimal OCI base image (debian:trixie-slim by default, about 28 MB), converts it to a bootable disk with pve-oci-import, registers it as Proxmox VM 9000, configures the microvm machine type and serial console, and finally converts the VM into a template.Once the template exists, new microVMs can be created instantly with the standard qm clone workflow. Because microVMs boot in well under a second and use a stripped kernel with no firmware or PCI emulation, the resulting sandboxes behave more like containers than full VMs while keeping KVM-level isolation.The command is intentionally zero-argument: it is meant as a one-shot bootstrapper so that qm clone and qm start can be used for everything afterwards.

The entire pve-microvm project is marked highly experimental: microvm is a QEMU machine type that Proxmox does not officially support, the package patches qemu-server to add support, and live migration, HA, and some backup edge cases are untested. Only use it on non-production hosts. The generated template boots a custom vmlinuz-microvm kernel with a minimal init — many tools (systemd, SSH, etc.) are not present until installed inside the guest. Tested on Proxmox VE 9.1 with QEMU 10.1.

Authored by Rui Carmo (rcarmo) and first released on GitHub in 2025 as part of the pve-microvm package. It complements sibling tools shipped in the same package: pve-oci-import, pve-microvm-run, pve-microvm-share, pve-microvm-ssh-agent, and pve-microvm-bench.

qm(1), pve-oci-import(1), pvesh(1), qemu-system-x86_64(1)