diff --git a/tests/lxd-vm/spread.yaml b/tests/lxd-vm/spread.yaml
index d05654f0..91f3ac8e 100644
--- a/tests/lxd-vm/spread.yaml
+++ b/tests/lxd-vm/spread.yaml
@@ -3,7 +3,10 @@ project: spread
 backends:
     lxd-vm:
         systems:
-            - ubuntu-20.04
+          # list systems which are known to work as VMs, both 16.04 and 18.04 do
+          # not work at all, lxd-agent does not start, 22.04 requires a fix for
+          # SSH from https://github.com/snapcore/spread/pull/184 or a similar PR
+          - ubuntu-20.04
 
 path: /home/test
 
diff --git a/tests/lxd-vm/task.yaml b/tests/lxd-vm/task.yaml
index 4e466cf0..69450e69 100644
--- a/tests/lxd-vm/task.yaml
+++ b/tests/lxd-vm/task.yaml
@@ -1,16 +1,14 @@
 summary: Test the lxd backend.
 
-prepare: |
-    if [ ! -f .spread-reuse.yaml ]; then
-        touch /run/spread-reuse.yaml
-        ln -s /run/spread-reuse.yaml .spread-reuse.yaml
-    fi
-
 execute: |
-    spread -vv -reuse -resend &> task.out
-
-    grep 'lxd-vm:ubuntu-20.04:checks/main' task.out
-    grep '^WORKS$' task.out
+    # we'll run out of space on GCP systems so run VM tests one by one
+    for t in $(spread -list); do
+        spread -vv "$t" &> task.out
+        MATCH '^WORKS$' < task.out
+        # delete all VM images (there's just one test per system so this is
+        # fine), note lxd 4.x does not support filtering by image type
+        lxc image delete $(lxc image list -f csv -c 'ft' |grep VIRTUAL | cut -f1 -d,)
+    done
 
 debug: |
     cat task.out || true