Virtualisation alternatives for deploying a small number of services

[Fabio Natali <me@fabionatali.com>]

Hi,

I'd like to run a small number of VMs on a single physical machine. The
reason for using VMs is security, i.e. to get a strong level of
isolation when deploying some services.

Among the options I've been considering:

+ libvirt, which I understand would imply some manual (potentially non
  declarative?) setup, beyond defining and bringing up the libvirt Guix
  service.
+ Ganeti, which might be a bit of an overkill for this particular use
  case.
+ Guix's 'least-authority-wrapper', which of course would give me
  containerisation rather than virtualisation, so not really what I'm
  looking for.

I think libvirt is my favourite option so far but I was wondering if
there's any further alternative that I haven't been considering.

I think the ideal solution would be some wrapper similar to the
least-authority one, but that spins up a VM rather than a container. I
see there's 'virtual-build-machine-service-type' which of course
wouldn't fit the bill, but it might be close to the idea of a VM-based
wrapper?

Any ideas or pointers to existing solution are welcome.

Thanks, best, Fabio.

(I'd be grateful if you could CC me in if replying as otherwise I might
miss your email.)


-- 
Fabio Natali
https://fabionatali.com