Setup & operation

Can I run nested virtualisation on a VPS?

Short answer

Yes. Nested virtualisation is enabled on every OnionVPS instance, so you can run KVM guests inside your instance, install Proxmox VE, or run Docker-in-Docker and VM-based CI jobs. Many providers disable it, which is the usual reason Proxmox and certain CI configurations fail elsewhere.

Nested guests carry a further performance penalty on top of the first layer — expect noticeably slower IO in particular. It is excellent for labs, testing and CI, and a poor choice for production workloads that could run at the first level.

Check with grep -E "vmx|svm" /proc/cpuinfo on your instance; if the flag is present, nesting is available.

See also: Nested virtualisation · KVM