Now in beta

The failure lab on your laptop.

Build realistic distributed environments from real Linux VMs and real networks — then break them on purpose. Inject latency, packet loss, and partitions at the NIC level and watch your system survive, before production runs the same experiment for you.

$ curl -fsSL https://get.iapetus.dev | bash

Start the free beta View pricing

Registering gets you a free Pro license for 3 months — no credit card. Runs on Ubuntu 24.04+ — other distros coming soon.

topology — kafka-partition.scenario fault active

kind and docker-compose give you containers sharing one kernel and a network you can't break.
Iapetus gives your services real machines with real NICs — then lets you cut the cable.

The lab

Build it. Break it. Watch it survive.

One tool for designing, running, and fault-testing realistic distributed environments — on your own workstation, not a shared staging cluster.

Real networks, real failures

Your VMs have actual NICs, so faults are real: inject latency, jitter, packet loss, bandwidth caps, and full partitions at the network-interface level — tc and iptables under the hood.

Real Linux VMs

Create, snapshot, and reset Ubuntu and Debian VMs in seconds. Cloud-init provisioning with Docker preinstalled on every machine.

Container orchestration

Deploy Docker Compose stacks to any VM or the host, backed by a built-in image registry and nginx reverse proxy.

Playbooks & pipelines

Sequence multi-step scenarios with reusable command templates, and stream live logs from every node. Reproducible environments, every single run.

Agents operate the entire environment

Everything the UI does, the HTTP API and MCP server do too. An AI agent can design, deploy, fault-test, and tear down the whole topology through the same surface you use.

Your laptop, not a cloud

Local-first by design: licenses verify offline, environments live and die on your hardware, and it all works with the WiFi off.

Workflow

From zero to a broken network in three steps

docker-compose is not your production topology. Run the real one — no cloud accounts, no YAML sprawl.

01
Spin up real VMs

Launch Ubuntu VMs in seconds, each provisioned with cloud-init and Docker, ready to connect.
02
Wire the topology

Connect VMs into bridged subnets that mirror the environment your system actually runs in.
03
Break it on purpose

Dial in latency and loss, cut links, partition the network — and watch how your services behave while playbooks replay the scenario reproducibly.

Platform support: the Iapetus app currently runs on Ubuntu 24.04+ — other distros coming soon. Guest VMs can run Ubuntu Server 22.04, 24.04 & 26.04 and Debian 13.

Would your system survive a partition?

Find out before production does. Registration takes a minute and gets you a free Pro license for 3 months.

Start the free beta