Module 11: Pausing VMs

Introduction

Now we have some virtual machines running, you are probably wondering “How do we connect to them?”

Pausing and Starting a VM

Let’s first start some VMs

minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm kill all
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm flush
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm launch kvm test[1-3]
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm start all

Now let’s stop one of those VMs

minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm stop test1
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ .columns id,name,state,memory vm info
host   | id | name        | state   | memory
ubuntu | 0  | test1       | PAUSED  | 128
ubuntu | 1  | test2       | RUNNING | 128
ubuntu | 1  | test2       | RUNNING | 128

And let’s start it back up

minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm start test1
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ .columns id,name,state,memory vm info
host   | id | name        | state   | memory
ubuntu | 0  | test1       | RUNNING | 128
ubuntu | 1  | test2       | RUNNING | 128
ubuntu | 1  | test2       | RUNNING | 128

Migrating a VM

You can tell minimega where to save that paused state file using the vm migrate command. And then at a later time boot from it.

First, let’s connect to the VNC from the website and do something to the VM so we know it wasn’t just rebooted. Such as opening a window.

Image of vmm1.png

Now let’s save the state to a file

minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm migrate test2 thisisatest

Now let’s go ahead and kill everything

minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm kill all
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm flush
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ .columns id,name,state,memory vm info

Now lets restore the state of that vm we captured from earlier

minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ clear vm config
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm config migrate /tmp/minimega/files/thisisatest
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm config memory 128
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm config cdrom /home/ubuntu/tinycore.iso
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm launch kvm thisisatest
minimega:/tmp/minimega/minimega$ vm start thisisatest
Image of vmm2.png

Authors

The minimega authors

30 May 2017