Lifecycle¶
Every VirtualMachineInstance
represents a single virtual machine
instance. In general, the management of VirtualMachineInstances is
kept similar to how Pods
are managed: Every VM that is defined in the
cluster is expected to be running, just like Pods. Deleting a
VirtualMachineInstance is equivalent to shutting it down, this is also
equivalent to how Pods behave.
Launching a virtual machine¶
In order to start a VirtualMachineInstance, you just need to create a
VirtualMachineInstance
object using kubectl
:
$ kubectl create -f vmi.yaml
Listing virtual machines¶
VirtualMachineInstances can be listed by querying for VirtualMachineInstance objects:
$ kubectl get vmis
Retrieving a virtual machine instance definition¶
A single VirtualMachineInstance definition can be retrieved by getting the specific VirtualMachineInstance object:
$ kubectl get vmis testvmi
Stopping a virtual machine instance¶
To stop the VirtualMachineInstance, you just need to delete the
corresponding VirtualMachineInstance
object using kubectl
.
$ kubectl delete -f vmi.yaml
# OR
$ kubectl delete vmis testvmi
Note: Stopping a VirtualMachineInstance implies that it will be deleted from the cluster. You will not be able to start this VirtualMachineInstance object again.
Starting and stopping a virtual machine¶
Virtual machines, in contrast to VirtualMachineInstances, have a running state. Thus on VM you can define if it should be running, or not. VirtualMachineInstances are, if they are defined in the cluster, always running and consuming resources.
virtctl
is used in order to start and stop a VirtualMachine:
$ virtctl start my-vm
$ virtctl stop my-vm
Note: You can force stop a VM (which is like pulling the power cord, with all its implications like data inconsistencies or [in the worst case] data loss) by
$ virtctl stop my-vm --grace-period 0 --force
Pausing and unpausing a virtual machine¶
Note: Pausing in this context refers to libvirt's
virDomainSuspend
command:
"The process is frozen without further access to CPU resources and I/O but the memory used by the domain at the hypervisor level will stay allocated"
To pause a virtual machine, you need the virtctl
command line tool. Its pause
command works on either VirtualMachine
s
or VirtualMachinesInstance
s:
$ virtctl pause vm testvm
# OR
$ virtctl pause vmi testvm
Paused VMIs have a Paused
condition in their status:
$ kubectl get vmi testvm -o=jsonpath='{.status.conditions[?(@.type=="Paused")].message}'
VMI was paused by user
Unpausing works similar to pausing:
$ virtctl unpause vm testvm
# OR
$ virtctl unpause vmi testvm