SYS: Start and stop virtual machines.

Note: This is an RHCSA 7 exam objective.

Presentation

When talking about virtual machines, it is mainly question of KVM management through the virsh and virt-* commands.

VM Management

To start a virtual machine (here vm.example.com), type:

# virsh start vm.example.com

To stop a virtual machine (here vm.example.com), type:

# virsh shutdown vm.example.com

To stop immediately a virtual machine (here vm.example.com), type:

# virsh destroy vm.example.com

To delete a virtual machine (here vm.example.com), type:

# virsh undefine vm.example.com

To reboot a virtual machine (here vm.example.com), type:

# virsh reboot vm.example.com

To display configuration information (memory, state, autostart, etc) about a virtual machine (here vm.example.com), type:

# virsh dominfo vm.example.com

VM Reporting

To get the list of all the virtual machines (active and inactive), type:

# virsh list --all

Note: Remove the –all option to only get the list of the active virtual machines.

To get a global picture of the VM activities, type:

# virt-top