For those familiar with OpenShift, the power and convenience of its templating engine are well-known. It allows users to define, customize, and reuse application definitions with ease. The KubeVirt community could greatly benefit from a similar mechanism that works on any plain Kubernetes cluster.

To that end, I have authored an enhancement proposal to introduce a native templating engine into KubeVirt. The proposal, tracked as VEP 76, details the design for making VirtualMachine templating a first-class citizen in the KubeVirt API. The goal is to provide a declarative way to manage complex VM specifications, reducing boilerplate and simplifying automation.

This new feature is designed to be extensible, with future plans to include import and export capabilities using the industry-standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF/OVA). This will make it even easier to share and manage templates across different environments and teams.

The implementation for this enhancement started at github.com/0xFelix/virt-template. This project will soon be moved to the KubeVirt organization at github.com/kubevirt/virt-template as it matures.

A native templating engine will significantly improve the user experience for the KubeVirt community. I invite you to review the enhancement proposal, check out the implementation, and join the discussion to help shape the future of VM management in Kubernetes.