# canonical/lxd

Powerful system container and virtual machine manager

Repository: https://github.com/canonical/lxd
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/lxd
Homepage: https://canonical.com/lxd
Language: Go
License: AGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: go, containers, lxc, lxd, criu, hacktoberfest
Last push: 2026-08-26T09:55:27+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 99, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4320, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 9, "gap_med": 22, "n_releases_24m": 22}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4816, forks 1043 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:00.337890+00:00)

## What it is
LXD is a system container and virtual machine manager that provides a unified, cloud-like experience for running full Linux systems in LXC containers or KVM virtual machines. It exposes a powerful REST API and CLI, scales from a single machine to full clusters, and includes features like live migration, snapshots, projects, and storage/network management.

## Use cases
- run full Linux system containers on a single server
- manage KVM virtual machines alongside containers
- build a small private cloud with a REST API
- set up a highly available container cluster across a data center rack
- spin up disposable dev environments from distribution images in seconds
- manage storage pools, networks, and instance snapshots centrally
- provision test machines for MAAS or CI pipelines

## When to choose
- you want lightweight VMs and system containers with minimal overhead on Linux
- you need to scale from one instance to a clustered production deployment
- you prefer an image-based workflow with a simple CLI and REST API
- you want a self-hosted private-cloud alternative with live migration and clustering

## When to avoid
- you need application-level container orchestration like Kubernetes workloads
- your daemon host is not Linux (only the lxc client runs on macOS/Windows)
- you require Windows or macOS containers rather than Linux guests
- you want Docker-style immutable application images rather than full system instances

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: stable
- function: container-runtime, api-framework, cli, deployment, networking, self-hosted
- domain: cloud-computing, infrastructure-as-code, self-hosted
- platform: go, cli, self-hosted
- tags: lxc, system-containers, virtual-machines, kvm, rest-api, clustering, live-migration, snapshots, criu, image-management, private-cloud, virtualization, containers, devops, linux, web-server

## Member repositories
- canonical/lxd (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:00.337890+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:18:34.184543+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/canonical/lxd (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:00.337890+00:00, sha 707f4ed4e387)
  - homepage: https://canonical.com/lxd (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.374650+00:00, sha d5f523731757)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/maas/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.384900+00:00, sha bc7664ac6338)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/microstack/docs/single-node (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.386959+00:00, sha e132e9b2be0a)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/microk8s/docs/getting-started (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.388969+00:00, sha 4cb1ea6f65e4)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/juju/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.390810+00:00, sha 657a866a1942)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/lxd/install (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.394531+00:00, sha 09e89f241e4b)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/lxd/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.396285+00:00, sha cbbc4621496b)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/blog/canonical-releases-ubuntu-26-04-lts-resolute-raccoon (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.392605+00:00, sha 61fee91e61d0)
  - site_page: https://canonical.com/maas/tutorials/build-a-maas-and-lxd-environment-in-30-minutes-with-multipass-on-ubuntu (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:57.397894+00:00, sha ddf3f3c2b49d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.