I have been playing around with KVM lately, just to see how it stacks up against VirtualBox and am loving it. I have found the following commands interesting while working with VMs.<\/p>\n
List all VMs<\/strong> Start stop a VM<\/strong> Clone VM <\/strong> Clone VM and assign Random Mac address to new image<\/strong> Shrink\/Sparcify VM image<\/strong> Delete VM<\/strong> List storage pools<\/strong> Refresh pool data<\/strong> Move VM to another system Offline<\/strong> Step 2 on new host get VM xml and image and enjoy. I have been playing around with KVM lately, just to see how it stacks up against VirtualBox and am loving it. I have found the following commands interesting while working with VMs. List all VMs virsh list –all Start stop a VM virsh start\/stop vmName Clone VM virt-clone –original vmName –name newVmName –file \/some\/path\/newVmName.qcow2 Clone … <\/p>\n
\nvirsh list --all<\/code><\/p>\n
\nvirsh start\/stop vmName<\/code><\/p>\n
\nvirt-clone --original vmName --name newVmName --file \/some\/path\/newVmName.qcow2<\/code><\/p>\n
\nvirt-clone --original vmName --name newVmName --file \/some\/path\/newVmName.qcow2 --mac=RANDOM<\/code>
\nCopy over the xml for the new clone which you can use to define your clone if moving the image to another host
\ncp \/etc\/libvirt\/qemu\/newVmName.xml \/some\/path\/newVmName.xml<\/code><\/p>\n
\nvirt-sparsify --format qcow2 --compress vmName.bkp.qcow2 vmName.qcow2 --tmp \/some\/path<\/code>
\nThis command assumes you renamed the original VM image file to “vmName.bkp.qcow2” incase the new image has problems you can revert to original image. You can skip the –tmp argument if you have more than double the size of the VM image available in your \/tmp directory. You will need to make sure you have package “libguestfs-tools” installed which supplies the sparsify command.<\/p>\n
\nvirsh undefine vmName<\/code>
\nThis removes the XMl configuration for qemu you might have to delete the VM image yourself.<\/p>\n
\nvirsh pool-list<\/code><\/p>\n
\nvirsh pool-refresh poolName<\/code>
\nYou will need to run this command if you delete a VM and you need to reuse the VM name you had used, so make sure you refresh the pool where your deleted image was located.<\/p>\nDisable autostarting of a VM<\/h2>\n
virsh autostart vmName --disable<\/code><\/p>\n
\nStep 1 from original host shutdown your VM, copy xml and image to backup location.
\n
\nvirsh dumpxml vmName > \/bkpLocation\/vmName.xml
\ncp \/locationofVMs\/vmname.qcow2 \/bkpLocation\/vmName.qcow2
\n<\/code>
\nBye default if you didn’t change image storage location it will be “\/var\/lib\/libvirt\/images”. I prefer to store them in a separate partition from the OS.<\/p>\n
\n
\nvirsh define \/bkpLocation\/vmName.xml
\nDomain vmName defined from \/bkpLocation\/vmName.xml
\nvirsh start vmName
\n<\/code>
\nThis all works if you are moving from host1 and host2 with similar cpus, for my purpose host2 had a different cpu type so I had to first create a new vm in host2 and compare the xml with my backed up copy then changed a few lines specific to CPU on host2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"