Chapter 19. Managing Guests with the Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager)

This chapter describes the Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) windows, dialog boxes, and various GUI controls.
virt-manager provides a graphical view of hypervisors and guests on your host system and on remote host systems. virt-manager can perform virtualization management tasks, including:
  • defining and creating guests,
  • assigning memory,
  • assigning virtual CPUs,
  • monitoring operational performance,
  • saving and restoring, pausing and resuming, and shutting down and starting guests,
  • links to the textual and graphical consoles, and
  • live and offline migrations.

Important

It is important to note which user you are using. If you create a guest virtual machine with one user, you will not be able to retrieve information about it using another user. This is especially important when you create a virtual machine in virt-manager. The default user is root in that case unless otherwise specified. Should you have a case where you cannot list the virtual machine using the virsh list --all command, it is most likely due to you running the command using a different user than you used to create the virtual machine.

19.1. Starting virt-manager

To start virt-manager session open the Applications menu, then the System Tools menu and select Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager).
The virt-manager main window appears.
Starting virt-manager

Figure 19.1. Starting virt-manager

Alternatively, virt-manager can be started remotely using ssh as demonstrated in the following command: 
# ssh -X host's address
[remotehost]# virt-manager
Using ssh to manage virtual machines and hosts is discussed further in Section 18.2, “Remote Management with SSH”.