Spin Up Ubuntu VMs Fast with Multipass – A Lightweight VMware Alternative

When it comes to virtual machine tools, most people think of VMware Workstation, which is powerful and allows easy configuration changes, but it requires a paid license.

Multipass

A reader recently recommended Multipass, a lightweight command‑line VM management tool that runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Getting Started

First, download and install Multipass from the official website for your operating system; the example uses Windows.

After installation, check the installed version:

$ multipass version

Create an Ubuntu Virtual Machine

First, list the available Ubuntu images: $ multipass find The command returns a list of images, such as core18, core20, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, etc.

Image                           Aliases          Version   Description
snapcraft:core18                20201111         Snapcraft builder for Core 18
snapcraft:core20                20201111         Snapcraft builder for Core 20
core                            core16           20200818   Ubuntu Core 16
core18                          20200812         Ubuntu Core 18
16.04                           xenial           20210128   Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
18.04                           bionic           20210129   Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
20.04                           focal,lts        20210223   Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
20.10                           groovy           20210209   Ubuntu 20.10
appliance:adguard-home         20200812         Ubuntu AdGuard Home Appliance
appliance:mosquitto            20200812         Ubuntu Mosquitto Appliance
appliance:nextcloud            20200812         Ubuntu Nextcloud Appliance
appliance:openhab              20200812         Ubuntu openHAB Home Appliance
appliance:plexmediaserver      20200812         Ubuntu Plex Media Server Appliance

Create a new container named dg:

$ multipass launch --name dg
Launched: dg

Then download the latest Ubuntu image and use it:

$ multipass exec dg -- lsb_release -d
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS

Operating the Virtual Machine

View VM List

After the VM is created, you can list all VMs:

Name        State    IPv4          Image
dg          Running  192.168.24.5  Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

The VM is running with IP address 192.168.24.5.

View VM Information

Use the following command to see detailed information about the running VM:

$ multipass info --all

Name:           dg
State:          Running
IPv4:           192.168.24.5
Release:        Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Image hash:     fe3030933742 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
Load:           0.00 0.00 0.00
Disk usage:     1.5G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   112.1M out of 985.7M

Enter the VM

Open a shell inside the VM: $ multipass shell dg If you prefer not to enter the shell, you can run commands directly with exec.

Pause / Restart the VM

# Pause
$ multipass stop dg
# Start
$ multipass start dg

Delete / Purge the VM

Deleting removes the VM entry, but the data remains until you purge it:

# Delete
$ multipass delete dg
# Purge
$ multipass purge dg

Configure Automation

To keep development and production environments consistent and save deployment time, you can use --cloud-init to initialize the container:

$ multipass launch --name ubuntu --cloud-init config.yaml

The config.yaml file might contain:

#cloud-config

runcmd:
  - curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
  - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
  - wget https://releases.leanapp.cn/leancloud/lean-cli/releases/download/v0.21.0/lean-cli-x64.deb
  - sudo dpkg -i lean-cli-x64.deb

The runcmd section runs commands on first boot.

Summary

After using Multipass for a while, I find it a great tool: it can spin up a Linux environment in minutes for small experiments, and it’s also handy for quickly setting up a local database cluster.

The only drawback is that Multipass only supports Ubuntu images because it is developed by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

Related Links

Official site: https://multipass.run/

Documentation: https://multipass.run/docs/