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Local VM Provisioning

Provision a local VM cluster, run commands over SSH, and tear it down using the CLI.

How To Provision Local VMs with Rediacc

Testing infrastructure locally before deploying to production saves time and prevents misconfigurations. In this tutorial, you provision a minimal VM cluster on your workstation, verify connectivity, run commands over SSH, and tear everything down. When you finish, you have a repeatable local development environment.

Prerequisites

  • A Linux or macOS workstation with hardware virtualization enabled
  • The rdc CLI installed and a config initialized with the local adapter
  • KVM/libvirt (Linux) or QEMU (macOS) installed — see Experimental VMs for setup instructions

Interactive Recording

Step 1: Verify system requirements

Before provisioning, confirm that your workstation has virtualization support and the required packages installed.

rdc ops check
CLI reference: rdc ops check

Rediacc checks for hardware virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V), required packages (libvirt, QEMU), and network configuration. Every check must pass before you can create VMs.

Step 2: Provision a minimal VM cluster

rdc ops up --basic --skip-orchestration
CLI reference: rdc ops up

Creates a two-VM cluster: a bridge VM (1 CPU, 1024 MB RAM, 8 GB disk) and a worker VM (2 CPU, 4096 MB RAM, 16 GB disk). The --skip-orchestration flag skips Rediacc platform provisioning, giving you bare VMs with SSH access only.

Note: The first provisioning downloads base images, which takes longer. Subsequent runs reuse cached images.

Step 3: Check cluster status

rdc ops status
CLI reference: rdc ops status

Displays the state of each VM in the cluster — IP addresses, resource allocation, and running status. Both VMs should show as running.

Step 4: Run commands on a VM

rdc ops ssh 1 hostname
rdc ops ssh 1 uname -a
CLI reference: rdc ops ssh

Runs commands on the bridge VM (ID 1) over SSH. Pass any command after the VM ID. For an interactive shell, omit the command: rdc ops ssh 1.

Step 5: Tear down the cluster

When you’re done, destroy all VMs and free resources.

rdc ops down
CLI reference: rdc ops down

Removes all VMs and cleans up networking. The cluster can be reprovisioned at any time with rdc ops up.

Troubleshooting

“KVM not available” or “hardware virtualization not supported” Verify that virtualization is enabled in your BIOS/UEFI settings. On Linux, check with lscpu | grep Virtualization. On WSL2, nested virtualization requires specific kernel flags.

“libvirt daemon not running” Start the libvirt service: sudo systemctl start libvirtd. On macOS, verify QEMU is installed via Homebrew: brew install qemu.

“Insufficient memory for VM allocation” The basic cluster requires at least 6 GB of free RAM (1 GB bridge + 4 GB worker + overhead). Close other resource-intensive applications or reduce VM specs.

Next Steps

You provisioned a local VM cluster, ran commands over SSH, and tore it down. To deploy real infrastructure: