Introduction to VirtUI Manager

VM management from the terminal.

VirtUI Manager is a TUI for managing QEMU/KVM VMs via libvirt. Keyboard-centric, no X11 required.

Why VirtUI Manager?

Managing virtual infrastructure often involves a trade-off between convenience and accessibility. Traditional tools often come with significant drawbacks:

• GUI tools (virt-manager) offer great visualization but require X11 forwarding or a heavy desktop environment, which is slow and resource-intensive over remote connections.
• Web interfaces (Cockpit) can be complex to deploy, feature-incomplete, or lack robust multi-hypervisor support.
• CLI tools (virsh) are fast but lack the overview and ease of use required for complex management tasks.

VirtUI Manager solves these challenges by providing a lightweight, fast, and feature-rich interface that runs entirely in the terminal.

• Actions Menu: Streamlined "Actions" menu with context-aware options.
• Bulk Operations: Execute commands across multiple VMs with regex patterns and group filters.
• Migration: Migrate workloads between servers. Handles storage, snapshots, and overlays.
• No X11 Required: Runs on headless servers and over SSH.

Key Features

🚀 Performance & Architecture

• Event-Driven UI: Uses libvirt events for real-time updates.
• Smart Caching: Metadata caching reduces API load.
• Multi-Server View: Manage multiple libvirt servers in one dashboard.

VM Control

• Configuration: Tweak CPU, memory, storage, and networking.
• State Mastery: Full support for snapshots and external disk overlays. Branch your VM states or revert changes with confidence.
• Host Info: Monitor host resources and hardware details (NUMA, CPU topology, cache).

📦 Provisioning

• Provisioning: Streamlined installation with intelligent defaults, UEFI support, and hardware detection.
• Automated Provisioning: Take deployment to the next level with full automated installation support (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Alpine, openSUSE/SLES), template management, and intelligent auto-prefill.
• Instant Cloning: Scale out instantly with advanced VM cloning, including auto-provisioning of storage.

🖥️ Remote & Advanced Access

• VirtUI Remote Viewer: A custom-built, native graphical viewer for VNC/SPICE consoles with support for USB redirection, real-time log monitoring, and snapshot management.
• Secure Web Console: Integrated noVNC support via websockify for browser-based access, even over SSH tunnels.
• Tmux Integration: Multitasking by launching text consoles in separate Tmux windows.
• Command Line Interface: Power users can leverage vmanager_cmd, a dedicated shell-like CLI for rapid management and automated pipelines.

Comparison

Feature	VirtUI Manager	Virt-Manager	Virsh (CLI)	Cockpit
Interface	TUI / GUI (GTK)	GUI (GTK)	CLI (Text)	Web UI
Remote via SSH	✅ Excellent	⚠️ Slow (X11)	✅ Excellent	❌ Setup required
Headless Support	✅ Native	❌ No	✅ Native	✅ Native
Multi-Server	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Resource Usage	🟢 Low	🔴 High	🟢 Lowest	🟡 Medium
Installation	🟢 Simple (Python)	🟡 Medium	🟢 Pre-installed	🔴 Complex

Getting Started

Ready to take control of your virtualization infrastructure?

1. Check the Installation Guide to get set up.
2. Explore the Main Window to understand the interface.
3. Try the GUI Console for a modern tabbed experience.
4. Learn about VM Configuration to tune your machines.