Virtual machine and container menu

Select a virtual machine or container in the tree and the content panel offers everything about that one guest. Four buttons stay in the toolbar wherever you are:

Button	What it does
Start / Shutdown	Power the guest on, or ask its operating system to shut down
Migrate	Move it to another node
Console	Open its screen and keyboard
More	Clone, convert to template, manage high availability, remove

At a glance

Entry	What it is for
Summary	Status and usage graphs
Console	The guest’s screen and keyboard
Hardware	CPU, memory, disks, network adapters, devices
Cloud-Init	First-boot user, password, keys and addressing
Options	Boot behaviour, guest agent, protection
Task History	What has been done to this guest
Monitor	Low-level diagnostics, used with support
Backup	Back up now, and restore from an archive
Replication	Copies of this guest on other nodes
Snapshots	Point-in-time states you can roll back to
Firewall	Rules for this guest’s network adapters
Permissions	Who may use this guest

Containers have no Cloud-Init or Monitor, and add Resources, Network and DNS — the container equivalents of the hardware settings.

Summary

Status and time-series graphs for this guest: CPU, memory, disk and network. Its notes field sits here too.

Console

Opens the guest’s screen and keyboard in the browser.

If the wrong characters appear

Console typing uses the layout set at Datacenter → Options → Keyboard Layout. Set it to match the keyboards actually in use.

Hardware

Everything the guest believes it has.

Add offers:

Type	What it is for
Hard Disk	Another virtual disk
Import Hard Disk	Attach a disk image staged on a storage that accepts Import content
CD/DVD Drive	Installation media
Network Device	Another network adapter
EFI Disk	Required for UEFI boot
TPM State	Required by operating systems that demand a TPM
USB Device / PCI Device	Pass a physical device through to the guest
Serial Port	A serial console
CloudInit Drive	Delivers the Cloud-Init settings
Audio Device, VirtIO RNG	Sound; a source of randomness
Virtiofs	Share a directory from the host into the guest

UEFI needs an EFI disk

If you set the guest to boot with UEFI, add an EFI Disk as well. Without one it will not boot.

Resizing or moving a disk

Select the disk and use Disk Action. It holds resize, move to a different storage, and reassign to another guest — the answers to “the disk is full” and “this machine is on the wrong storage”.

Growing the virtual disk does not grow the filesystem inside the guest; do that from within the guest afterwards.

Passed-through devices pin a machine to a node

A machine with a PCI Device or USB Device attached directly cannot migrate, because the destination has no such device at that address. Define the device under Datacenter → Resource Mappings and attach it by name instead — then any node with an equivalent device can run the machine. The same applies to Virtiofs and Directory Mappings.

Cloud-Init

Sets what a machine configures itself with on first boot: user name, password, SSH keys, DNS and IP addressing. Combined with a template, this is how a clone comes up ready to use without touching the console.

After changing anything here, use Regenerate Image so the guest picks the change up on its next boot.

Options

Setting	Why it matters
Start at boot	Off by default. After a power cut, machines do not come back unless this is on.
Start/Shutdown order	Decides sequence — a database before the application that needs it.
Boot Order	Which device the machine tries first.
QEMU Guest Agent	Off by default. See below.
Protection	Blocks deleting the machine and its disks.
Hotplug	Which kinds of hardware may be added while it is running.
OS Type	Tunes defaults for the operating system installed.

Turn the guest agent on

Without it, Shutdown is a request the guest may ignore, backups cannot pause the filesystem to get a consistent image, and the machine’s IP addresses are not reported in the interface. Enable it here and install the agent inside the guest.

Protection is the cheapest safeguard you have

Turn it on for anything you would be sorry to lose. It stops the machine and its disks being deleted until you deliberately turn it off.

Task History

Everything done to this guest — starts, stops, backups, migrations — with who did it and whether it worked. The first place to look when something behaved unexpectedly.

Backup

Back this guest up now, and restore it from any archive on a storage.

Button	What it does
Backup now	An immediate backup, independent of any scheduled job
Restore	Restore the selected archive
Show Configuration	The guest’s hardware as it was when that backup was taken
Edit Notes	Label an archive, so you know why it exists
Change Protection	Exempt an archive from being pruned

Show Configuration is what answers “what did this machine look like before we changed it”.

See Backups and restore.

Replication

Scheduled copies of this guest’s disks on other nodes, with Log for the last run and Schedule now to run immediately. See Replication.

Snapshots

A point-in-time state you can return to. Take Snapshot, then Rollback to go back. Including memory (RAM) means a rollback resumes the machine mid-run rather than booting it.

Snapshots are not backups

They live on the same storage as the disk they belong to. If that storage is lost, so are they. Take snapshots before a risky change; rely on backups for everything else.

Firewall

Rules for this guest’s network adapters, with Options, Alias, IPSet and Log.

Guest rules only take effect when the firewall is enabled at datacenter level, at guest level, and on the individual network adapter. See Firewall.

Permissions

Who may use this guest, and with which role. Granting here is the same as granting at the path /vms/<id> under Datacenter → Permissions.

Cloning, templates and migration

More → Clone copies the guest. You choose the target node, a new ID and name, the target storage, and — where available — whether it is a full copy or a linked copy that shares the original’s disk.

More → Convert to template turns the guest into a template. Templates cannot be started, only cloned, and cloning from one can be near-instant. This is how you build a standard image once and stamp out machines from it.

More → Manage HA adds this guest to high availability without going to Datacenter → HA.

Migrate moves the guest to another node. The dialog shows warnings before it starts — storage the target cannot reach, or devices it does not have. Address those first.

Migration needs the disks to be reachable

A machine whose disk is on storage only one node can see cannot simply move. Use shared storage, or set up replication so a copy already exists on the target.

Creating a guest

Create VM and Create CT in the header open the wizards. Both carry Add to HA on their first tab, so a machine can be made highly available as it is created.

For virtual machines see Creating a virtual machine; for containers see Containers.