Virtual Machines

MicroVMs with Neutron Stardust — when containers aren't isolated enough.

Why VMs?

Containers share the host kernel. That's efficient, but it means a kernel vulnerability in any container can compromise the entire host. Neutron Stardust microVMs give each workload its own kernel, eliminating shared-kernel attacks entirely.

Creating VMs

# Create a microVM with 128MB RAM
volt vm create --name secure-app --base alpine --memory 128M

# Create with custom kernel
volt vm create --name custom-vm \
  --kernel /path/to/vmlinux \
  --rootfs /path/to/rootfs.ext4 \
  --memory 256M \
  --cpus 2

Performance

Snapshots

Neutron Stardust supports snapshot and restore with content-addressed storage integration:

# Create a snapshot
volt vm snapshot --name secure-app

# Restore from snapshot (near-instant)
volt vm restore --name secure-app

When to Use VMs vs Containers

• Use containers for trusted workloads, internal services, dev environments
• Use VMs for multi-tenant isolation, untrusted code, compliance requirements
• Use both — Volt lets you toggle between them with the same tooling