kubevirt-virt-operator

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for kubevirt-virt-operator

KubeVirt extends Kubernetes with the ability to run VMs alongside containers. This family covers the four control-plane components; virt-launcher is served from upstream quay.io.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubevirt-virt-operator:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's KubeVirt images are drop-in replacements for the upstream kubevirt/kubevirt control-plane container images:

Scope: this image family ships only the four control-plane components above. virt-launcher (the per-VM pod entrypoint that spawns qemu/libvirt) is not currently included — clusters using these images must continue to pull virt-launcher from the upstream quay.io/kubevirt registry (see the deployment snippet below for the one-line override). virt-chroot, the SELinux/mount-namespace helper, is bundled inside kubevirt-virt-handler; there is no separate image for it.

The virt-handler image runs as root and includes a qemu user (uid/gid 107) so it can chown the domain-notify unix socket for per-VM launcher IPC. The other three components run as uid 1001, matching upstream.

FIPS Support

The kubevirt-virt-*-fips Chainguard Images ship with a validated redistribution of OpenSSL's FIPS provider module. For more on FIPS support in Chainguard Images, consult the guide on FIPS-enabled Chainguard Images on Chainguard Academy.

Available Images

cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubevirt-virt-operator:latest
cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubevirt-virt-api:latest
cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubevirt-virt-controller:latest
cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubevirt-virt-handler:latest

FIPS variants are also available with the -fips suffix.

Deployment

KubeVirt is deployed using the KubeVirt operator. Two steps are required on top of the upstream instructions:

1. Swap the four control-plane image references in the operator manifest before applying it.
2. After the operator is rolled out, set the VIRT_{API,CONTROLLER,HANDLER,LAUNCHER}_IMAGE environment variables on the virt-operator Deployment. Upstream's operator derives every other component's image at reconcile time by substituting the binary name into its own VIRT_OPERATOR_IMAGE registry + tag. Without these overrides, the operator would try to pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubevirt-virt-launcher:<tag> (an image we don't publish) and the admission-controller image refs in the manifest would be re-derived by tag lookup, losing any digest-pinning you applied via the sed step above.

export KUBEVIRT_VERSION="vX.X.X"
export ORG="ORGANIZATION"
export NAMESPACE="kubevirt"

curl -fsSL "https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/releases/download/${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}/kubevirt-operator.yaml" \
  | sed -E \
    -e "s|quay.io/kubevirt/virt-operator:[^ \"]+|cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-operator:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}|g" \
    -e "s|quay.io/kubevirt/virt-api:[^ \"]+|cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-api:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}|g" \
    -e "s|quay.io/kubevirt/virt-controller:[^ \"]+|cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-controller:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}|g" \
    -e "s|quay.io/kubevirt/virt-handler:[^ \"]+|cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-handler:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}|g" \
  | kubectl apply -f -

kubectl rollout status deployment/virt-operator -n "${NAMESPACE}" --timeout=180s

kubectl -n "${NAMESPACE}" set env deployment/virt-operator \
  VIRT_API_IMAGE="cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-api:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}" \
  VIRT_CONTROLLER_IMAGE="cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-controller:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}" \
  VIRT_HANDLER_IMAGE="cgr.dev/${ORG}/kubevirt-virt-handler:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}" \
  VIRT_LAUNCHER_IMAGE="quay.io/kubevirt/virt-launcher:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}" \
  VIRT_EXPORTPROXY_IMAGE="quay.io/kubevirt/virt-exportproxy:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}" \
  VIRT_EXPORTSERVER_IMAGE="quay.io/kubevirt/virt-exportserver:${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}"

kubectl rollout status deployment/virt-operator -n "${NAMESPACE}" --timeout=180s

kubectl apply -f "https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/releases/download/${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}/kubevirt-cr.yaml"

kubectl -n "${NAMESPACE}" wait kv kubevirt --for=condition=Available --timeout=15m

In production, substitute :${KUBEVIRT_VERSION} with @sha256:<digest> references — the operator passes the VIRT_*_IMAGE values through verbatim, and digest-pinning gives reproducible rollouts that are immune to registry tag mutations.

Documentation and Resources

• KubeVirt GitHub Repository
• KubeVirt User Guide
• KubeVirt API Reference

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