Several real machines. Real networks. On your laptop.
Iapetus gives you several real Linux VMs on your workstation, wired into networks you control — deploy across them, cut a node's network, throttle a NIC, and prove your system recovers. Disposable, repeatable — one tool instead of Vagrantfile + shell scripts + tc + hope.
curl -fsSL https://get.iapetus.dev | bash
Iapetus is free to use on your own machine: registering gets you a free Local license, no credit card. Runs on Ubuntu 24.04+ — other distros coming soon.
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 Linux VMs
Create, snapshot, and reset Ubuntu and Debian VMs in seconds. Cloud-init provisioning from profiles — the default lab profile ships Docker and dev tooling on every machine; slimmer profiles are one click away.
Container orchestration
Deploy Docker Compose stacks to any VM or the host, backed by a built-in image registry and nginx reverse proxy.
Real networks, real failures
Your VMs have actual NICs, so faults are real: inject latency, jitter, packet loss, and bandwidth caps, or cut a node off the network entirely — tc and iptables under the hood.
Playbooks & fault drills
Save fault sequences — cut a node, restore, throttle, wait — with reusable command templates, and replay them identically every run. A failed run unwinds the faults it applied.
Agents drive the same surface you do
UI, HTTP API, and MCP share the same core surface. An AI agent can design, deploy, fault-test, and tear down the whole topology through the same API 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
Three steps from an empty workstation to a multi-machine lab you're allowed to break — no cloud account, no ticket to a shared staging cluster.
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01
Spin up real VMs
Launch Ubuntu or Debian VMs in seconds, each provisioned with cloud-init from a profile you choose — the default lab profile includes Docker — ready to connect.
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02
Wire the topology
Connect VMs into bridged subnets that mirror the environment your system actually runs in.
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03
Break it on purpose
Dial in latency and loss, isolate a node, block its internet — and watch how your services behave while playbooks replay the drill identically.
Plans
Free on your machine. Team for your servers and CI.
Local · free
Everything Iapetus does, on your own machine
The desktop app, environments and environment files, fault injection and the MCP server, with no limit on machines. Your free license comes with a sign-up.
Team · talk to us
The engine for your team's servers and CI
Run the environments you built on your laptop headless, with iap verify
and the REST web agent, share them through the cloud catalog, and wire machines together over WireGuard.
Platform support: the Iapetus app currently runs on Ubuntu 24.04+ — other distros coming soon. Guest VMs can run Ubuntu Server 20.04, 22.04, 24.04 & 26.04 and Debian 13.
Would your system survive losing a node?
Find out before production does. Registration takes a minute and gets you a free Local license.