How to Quickly Deploy Nano: A Lightweight KVM Cloud Management Platform

01 Introduction to Nano

Nano is a lightweight virtual machine management platform built on KVM technology and developed in Go. It offers a complete set of features—from a web management portal and host monitoring to image cloning and failover—ready to use out of the box, allowing you to turn a server cluster into a cloud host platform within minutes.

The software eliminates the complexity of traditional cloud platforms, which often involve numerous interdependent components, a large product system, and many conceptual terms that make learning and configuration difficult.

By leveraging intelligent automation, Nano replaces error‑prone manual operations, providing a powerful yet stable cloud management solution that frees operations staff while improving resource utilization, availability, and reliability.

On standard x86 servers supporting Intel VT‑d or AMD‑v, administrators can download the Nano deployment package and convert the servers into a cloud management platform in about three minutes.

Basic Working Principle

Nano aggregates one or more x86 servers into a virtual resource pool. When a user creates a cloud instance via the web portal or REST API, the Core module selects an appropriate node based on load, instructs the corresponding Cell module to create the instance, and handles subsequent management, scheduling, and resource reclamation.

The Core module is the central controller responsible for cluster creation and management, resource pool monitoring, allocation of cloud and image resources, REST services, and task distribution. It must start first before other modules become operational.

Each Cell module runs on a server capable of hosting cloud instances, operates on KVM and Libvirt, continuously reports node resource status to Core, and upon receiving creation commands, allocates network, storage, and compute resources to assemble a cloud instance for the user.

02 Installing Nano

wget https://nanos.cloud/files/nano_installer_1.3.0.tar.gz
tar zxfv nano_installer_1.2.0.tar.gz
cd nano_installer
./installer

During the first installation, accept the default configuration. If the server has multiple NICs, select the one connected to the internal network when prompted.

If dependency warnings appear, they can be ignored; simply confirm the network interface selection.

02 Starting Nano Services

$ cd /opt/nano/core
$ ./core start
$ cd ../cell
$ ./cell start
$ cd ../frontend
$ ./frontend start

One‑Click Startup Script

#!/bin/bash
ps -ef | grep core | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9 > /dev/null
ps -ef | grep cell | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9 > /dev/null
ps -ef | grep frontend | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9 > /dev/null
cd /opt/nano/core
./core start
cd /opt/nano/cell
./cell start
cd /opt/nano/frontend
./frontend start

Run the script with sh start.sh and then access the web UI at http://192.168.106.135:5870.

03 Configuring Nano Services

After logging in for the first time, register a user password.

Navigate to "Compute Resource Pool" → "Local Storage" → "Resource Nodes" and add the current machine as a resource node.

The default resource node path is /var/lib/libvirt/images, while Nano stores system images in /opt/nano/core/data. You can change these locations as needed.

Upload an ISO image as a CD-ROM, then create a cloud instance by selecting the blank image source (since an ISO is used for OS installation).

Monitor the remote installation progress and view resource usage of running cloud instances through the built‑in monitoring dashboard.

This simple workflow demonstrates creating a cloud instance; many additional powerful features remain to be explored, all with a deployment time of just three minutes.