Systems and methods for scale testing infrastructure as a service systems are disclosed. A processing device generates a container image including a plurality of processes for providing compute functions and modifying a fake virtual driver with network switch functionality. The plurality of processes includes a compute process to create fake virtual machines using the modified fake virtual driver. The processing device generates a plurality of simulated compute nodes using the container image and generates a plurality of fake virtual machines using the modified fake virtual driver on one or more simulated compute nodes, scheduled as pods using a container orchestration engine. In this way, network and messaging traffic on the control plane is effectively simulated at scale. The modified fake driver enables network switch functionality so that network configuration for each fake virtual machine may be simulated, thereby mimicking the network actions of a virtual machine on a compute node.