google/novm
Experimental KVM-based VMM for containers, written in Go. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
10/100
- Activity 0
- Release rhythm 35
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_releases archived
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 4396
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 2273
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
1676 stars · 118 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded
novm is an experimental, legacy-free type 2 hypervisor (VMM) written in Go that leverages the Linux KVM interface to run guest instances. It exposes a filesystem-device as the primary mechanism for running guests, aiming to combine the isolation of hardware virtualization with the lightweight bundling flexibility of containers.
Use cases
- run cloud workloads in lightweight VMs with hardware-enforced isolation
- run containers with stronger isolation than shared-kernel container runtimes
- run a guest with a kernel decoupled from the host kernel
- bundle software and data as filesystem-based VM images instead of disk images
- run workloads requiring a specific or different guest kernel version
- achieve multi-tenant isolation for untrusted workloads
When to choose
- you need hardware-enforced isolation stronger than container namespaces for multi-tenant workloads
- you want container-like lightweight VM bundling without managing virtual disk images
- your workloads are modern cloud applications that don't need legacy hardware emulation
- you need to run a guest kernel version independent of the host kernel
When to avoid
- you need to run legacy applications requiring hardware emulation or legacy device support
- your workloads are extremely I/O intensive and cannot tolerate virtualization overhead
- you need a production-ready, actively maintained VMM with ongoing support
- plain containers meet your isolation and kernel flexibility needs
Facets
application · maturity abandoned
container-runtime security cloud cloud-computing security go hypervisor vmm kvm lightweight-vms containers microvm paravirtualization cloud-workloads filesystem-device type-2-hypervisor virtualization infrastructure linux x86
1 source
- readme: https://github.com/google/novm · fetched 2026-08-28 · 10ac264ab0ab
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| google/novm | main | 10 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem