--- title: Quick VMs with NixOS | daily.dev description: A practical workflow for spinning up NixOS-based QEMU VMs for local development and experimentation. The post walks through defining a NixOS configuration file... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/quick-vms-with-nixos-zsfesgiw8 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Quick VMs with NixOS | daily.dev og:description: A practical workflow for spinning up NixOS-based QEMU VMs for local development and experimentation. The post walks through defining a NixOS configuration file... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/quick-vms-with-nixos-zsfesgiw8 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ZsFEsgiw8.png og:image:alt: Quick VMs with NixOS og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Quick VMs with NixOS **[Jacek Galowicz](https://daily.dev/sources/galowicz)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A practical workflow for spinning up NixOS-based QEMU VMs for local development and experimentation. The post walks through defining a NixOS configuration file that sets up a Mosquitto MQTT broker inside a VM with port forwarding and SSH access, then extends it with Node-RED. Key advantages highlighted include incremental rebuilds without recreating disk images, easy state management via a qcow2 file, and clean separation between app-specific and test-VM-specific NixOS modules. The approach is presented as more flexible than docker-compose for iterating toward production-ready configurations. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Coding Agent VMs on NixOS with microvm.nix](https://daily.dev/posts/coding-agent-vms-on-nixos-with-microvm-nix-srrlmefyj) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [NixOS first impressions: writing system-level tests](https://daily.dev/posts/nixos-first-impressions-writing-system-level-tests-o6sjlaois) · Advanced Web Machinery · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [A 'small' vanilla Kubernetes install on NixOS](https://daily.dev/posts/a-small-vanilla-kubernetes-install-on-nixos-utc94vkd0) · Lobsters · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/infrastructure), [#backend](https://daily.dev/tags/backend), [#nixos](https://daily.dev/tags/nixos) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/quick-vms-with-nixos-zsfesgiw8) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Quick VMs with NixOS","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/quick-vms-with-nixos-zsfesgiw8","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/quick-vms-with-nixos-zsfesgiw8"},"datePublished":"2026-04-18T22:20:02.349Z","dateModified":"2026-04-18T22:20:33.892Z","description":"A practical workflow for spinning up NixOS-based QEMU VMs for local development and experimentation. 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