Try it now — no physical hardware needed. Grab the qcow2 or OVA image, boot it as a VM on VMware, VirtualBox, KVM, or a cloud host (nested virtualization), set an IP, and the ZSvirt management node is ready. See Run ZSvirt inside a VM or jump to the Quick Start.
What is ZSvirt
ZSvirt brings ZStack's enterprise-proven ZSphere virtualization engine into the open-source world. Backed by ZStack, a mature infrastructure leader, ZSvirt is a lightweight, scalable platform for running and managing virtual machines without vendor lock-in.
Install a management node, attach KVM-based hosts, and manage your whole environment — VMs, clusters, storage, and networks — through a web UI, a RESTful API (with Terraform and Go/Python/Java SDKs), or a CLI. VMware migration tooling — online migration, OVF import, and VMDK upload — is built in.
🗣️ Pronunciation Guide
We have heard "ZSvirt" said a few different ways in the community, and there
is no wrong one. Our suggestion: blend the Z and the S into a single
sound, so the name comes out as "Z-s Virt" — close to "zeese Virt".
That is also where the name's playful spirit lives: read as one sound, it says
"This is Virtualization", which is the core idea behind the project. If you
prefer to read it letter by letter as "Z-S-virt," that works just as well.
Say it however comes most naturally to you.
Product Tour
Live Demo
ZSvirt Live Demo is a free hosted environment for trying ZSvirt online — no installation or sign-up required. Open the link and click Demo Login to start exploring the platform right away.
Architecture
ZSvirt uses a modular architecture built around virtualization resource
management, the management plane, extension services, and operational tooling.
Core capabilities include:
- Compute virtualization: host, cluster, virtual machine, image, and
lifecycle management.
- Network virtualization: virtual networks, network services, security
groups, and related capabilities.
- Storage virtualization: primary storage, backup storage, volumes,
snapshots, and storage resource management.
- Management plane: API framework, permission model, events, alarms,
auditing, and system operations.
- Extension services: capabilities for migration, disaster recovery,
monitoring, quota management, access control, and enterprise operations.
- Tools and integrations: installation tools, diagnostics tools, migration
tools, automation scripts, agents, CLI, and external system integrations.
At the software architecture level, ZSvirt emphasizes asynchrony, statelessness,
extensibility, and automation:
- Asynchronous architecture: supports asynchronous messages, asynchronous
methods, and asynchronous HTTP calls to reduce blocking and improve system
throughput.
- Stateless services: individual requests do not depend on state from other
requests, making services easier to scale, recover, and operate.
- Plugin-based extensibility: supports horizontal extension of resource
types, business capabilities, and integration capabilities through plugins.
- Workflow engine: manages the execution order of complex operations and
supports rollback and recovery in failure scenarios.
- Tagging and query capabilities: supports resource attribute extension,
resource classification, unified queries, and automation orchestration.
- Automated deployment: uses automation tools to handle deployment,
configuration, and operations tasks, reducing deployment and maintenance
complexity.
VMware Migration Guide
As enterprises reassess their virtualization strategies, migration from VMware to alternative platforms has become an important topic for organizations seeking cost control, infrastructure flexibility, and long-term operational stability.
ZSvirt provides migration-oriented capabilities and operational tools to help users evaluate, plan, and move workloads from existing VMware environments to ZSvirt-based virtualization infrastructure.
Quick Start
The fastest way to evaluate ZSvirt is to follow the quick start guide in the product documentation. It walks you through preparing compute, network, and storage resources, initializing the management service, and creating your first virtual machine.
Prefer to try it in a VM first? Download the qcow2 or OVA image and run the management node inside any hypervisor — see Running ZSvirt inside a VM.
🚀 Quick Start
▶️ Video
Best Practices
Powered by the same enterprise engine as ZSphere, ZSvirt inherits proven success across global customers below.
Virtualization Platform Comparison
Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere vs ZSvirt
Roadmap
2026H2
| Area | Planned work |
|---|
| Security | Add virtual machine disk encryptionAdd virtual machine migration encryption |
| DRS & VM Migration | Add more flexible migration options:• Able to migrate disks individually• Support both hot and cold migration for SAN to SAN scenario |
| ZMigrate | ZMigrate 2.1:• Add pre-check to mitigate risks for complex migration• Simpler and smarter migration workflows |
| Operations | Add VM CPU ready time, VM disk read/write latency, network packet drop rate, and host CPU ready time metricsSupport more granular log levels for external syslog forwardingAdd NVMe and FC device monitoring, including IOPS and latencyAdd built-in QXL drivers in VMTools for improved VM console display and resolution |
| Inventory Management | Extend storage and VM registration capability to cover same-site registration |
Governance
ZSvirt is governed by a lightweight open-source governance model that defines
how the project is maintained, how decisions are made, and how contributors
collaborate.
The GOVERNANCE.md document is the starting point for learning
about project roles, maintainer responsibilities, decision-making processes,
release management, and community collaboration.
As the community grows, the governance model may evolve to include dedicated
maintainers, working groups, and more formal project processes.
Contributing
We welcome and appreciate contributions from the community. Whether you are
fixing bugs, improving documentation, proposing features, adding tests, or
sharing deployment, migration, and operational practices, your contribution
helps make ZSvirt better.
If you are new to the project, you can start with documentation improvements,
issue reports, test verification, migration experience, or community
discussions. Developers are also welcome to contribute code improvements,
tooling enhancements, and integrations.
We may recognize active contributors through community acknowledgements,
release notes, contributor lists, or future community programs.
Before contributing, please read:
Security
The security process for reporting vulnerabilities is described in
SECURITY.md.
Please do not report security vulnerabilities through public GitHub Issues or
Discussions.
License
ZSvirt is licensed under the
GNU General Public License v3.0.
Some repositories or components may include third-party open-source software
under different licenses. Please check the LICENSE, NOTICE, and related
files in each repository for details.
Resources
