Images, ISOs & devices

Beyond creating and connecting to VMs, Bitsmith manages the images they’re built from, lets you pass hardware through, and checks your server can run virtualization well.

Images and ISOs

Images are cloud images VMs are cloned from. Download ready-made ones from the catalog, which currently ships Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Server, and Fedora 44, each for amd64 and arm64, or upload your own qcow2 disk image. Manage them on the VM Images page.

ISOs are installer discs for building a VM from scratch. Upload an ISO on the ISOs page, then choose it as the source when creating a VM. You can also mount an ISO into an existing VM, for example to run a repair tool.

Downloaded images and uploaded ISOs are stored on a storage space and can be deleted when you no longer need them.

USB passthrough

To give a VM direct access to a physical USB device (a license dongle, a TV tuner, a drive), open USB devices from the VM’s menu and select the device. The VM sees the hardware as if it were plugged into it directly. USB is the only passthrough Bitsmith does; there’s no GPU passthrough.

Boot firmware

Each VM can boot with either BIOS (SeaBIOS) or UEFI (OVMF). Most modern cloud images work with the default; switch to UEFI from the VM’s menu if an OS requires it.

Host readiness

The VM Advanced page checks your server is set up for virtualization, for example that hardware acceleration (KVM) is available. Green checks mean you’re good to go; a warning explains what’s missing and what it affects. If your hardware or BIOS doesn’t support virtualization, VMs may run slowly or not at all.