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Managing Virtual Machines

Day-to-day work on an existing virtual machine happens from its detail page in the Console.

Power Controls​

Power controls appear at the top of the detail page and depend on the machine's state. A stopped machine shows a single Start button. A running machine shows:

  • Reboot: a graceful restart, signaling the guest operating system to shut down cleanly and boot again.
  • Shutdown: a graceful power-off, sending the guest an ACPI shutdown request.
  • A dropdown with two forceful actions: Stop halts the machine immediately, and Reset cuts power and boots again in one step.
warning

Forceful Stop and Reset are the equivalent of pulling the power cord and can cause data loss or a corrupted file system. Use them only when the guest is unresponsive.

If the hosting hypervisor is offline, the power controls are disabled until it comes back.

Hardware​

Adjust the machine's CPU and memory from the Hardware tab: change the Virtual CPU Cores or Memory allocation and click Save. Hardware changes may require the VM to be stopped before they can be applied.

Virtual Disks​

Virtual disks are managed from the Virtual Disks tab, which lists each disk's name, boot order, total size, size on disk, and bus type. Every disk lives in the server's single Storage Pool, so its capacity comes from the pool's free space.

Each action is available on the disk it applies to:

  • Add Disk creates a new disk and attaches it to the VM. The maximum size is limited by the free space in the Storage Pool.
  • Attach Disk attaches an existing disk. Only disks not attached to another VM are offered.
  • Expand grows a disk by the amount you enter. Expansion cannot be reversed: a disk can only be made larger, never smaller.
  • Detach removes a disk from the VM without deleting it. The disk can be reattached to this or another VM later.
  • Set Boot Disk makes the disk the VM's primary boot device.
  • Rename changes the disk's display name.

Optical Disks (ISOs)​

There is no dedicated ISOs tab; optical media is attached from the Virtual Disks tab with Attach ISO, choosing from the ISOs available on the host. ISOs enter the system as templates. Once attached, an optical disk behaves like a regular disk: use Set Boot Disk to boot an installer and Detach to remove it when finished. There is no bootable checkbox in the attach dialog; you control boot order after attaching.

Network Interfaces​

The Network Interfaces tab lists each adapter by its MAC address and connected network. Select Add Interface and choose one of the hypervisor's networks or VLANs to attach another adapter; select Remove to detach one. Remove is only available when the machine has two or more interfaces, so a machine always keeps at least one.

Delete a Virtual Machine​

Deleting a machine is permanent. The machine is removed and its disks are detached in a single step.

  1. Open the Actions tab and select Delete.
  2. Type the machine's exact name into the confirmation field to enable the Delete button, then select it.

Tasks​

The Tasks tab lists the asynchronous operations that have run against the machine (power changes, reconfigures, deletion) and whether each succeeded. If an action does not appear to take effect, check here whether it is still in progress or failed.