Basic VirtualMachineInstance operations can be performed with the stock kubectl utility. However, the virtctl binary utility is required to use advanced features such as:

It also provides convenience commands for:

Starting and stopping VirtualMachineInstances

Live migrating VirtualMachineInstances and canceling live migrations

Uploading virtual machine disk images

There are two ways to get it:

the most recent version of the tool can be retrieved from the official release page

it can be installed as a kubectl plugin using krew

Example:

It is required to install krew plugin manager beforehand. If krew is installed, virtctl can be installed via krew:

Then virtctl can be used as a kubectl plugin. For a list of available commands run:

Every occurrence throughout this guide of

should then be read as