The VIRSH Cheat Sheet. Common VIRSH Commands

VIRSH is a tool which is run on the command line to manage guest virtual servers and the hypervisor on KVM nodes. It’s built upon the libvert management API. This Virsh cheat sheet details the common commands used to manage KVM VPS Servers running on a dedicated server.

Basic VIRSH commands

The instance name can be different depending on the hypervisor used, we’re using “First2Host101” for the instance name in this guide but you should swap this for the instance name you wish to manage, SolusVM servers will usually be defined by kvm101, kvm102, kvm103. Use the virsh list –all command see the guest domain names on your node.

VIRSH Control Commands

virsh start First2Host101

Start the guest

virsh shutdown First2Host101 

Shutdown the guest

virsh destroy First2Host101 

Delete the server

virsh suspend First2Host101 

Suspend the container

virsh resume First2Host101 

Unsuspend the container

virsh console First2Host101

Open a serial console for the server.

Virsh Cheat Sheet

Define Instances

virsh dumpxml First2Host101 > dump.xml

Create a dump file which you can use to create more guests or add more options to existing guests.

virsh create dump.xml

Virsh create is used to create guests. dump.xml is the configuration file which can be created using the virsh dump command above.

virsh edit First2Host101

Virsh edit allows you to edit a guests configuration file.

virsh underfine First2Host101 [--managed-save] [storage] [--remove-all-storage] [--wipe-storage] [--snapshots-metadata] [--nvram]

The undefine option allows you to undefine a guest. If the guest is inactive it’s converted to a transient domain.

virsh setmem First2Host101 1000000

Set the guest memory limit in kilobytes. The above commands set 1 GB of memory.

virsh setvcpus 12

Set the number of vCPUs a guest is assigned.

Node Information

virsh dominfo
 First2Host101

virsh vcpuinfo
 First2Host101

Print CPU information for a guest.

virsh nodeinfo

Print node information in the console.

virsh list --all|--inactive

List all guests on the node or list all inactive guests.

Quit VERSH

virsh quit

Red Hat provides a full guide on how to manage virsh from the command line and for a full list of options to use with Virsh you can check out the documentation at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/5/html/virtualization/chap-virtualization-managing_guests_with_virsh