Make sure you have read the Installation Instructions carefully before you continue reading this document.
The basic idea is to maintain a dedicated directory for each virtual machine and its configuration files (like the login credentials). Below you can see an example listing of such a virtual machine directory:
$ ls $KVM_VM_INSTANCES/lxdev01.devops.test
chef_attributes.json
chef_config.rb
cookbooks/
disk.img
keys/
libvirt_instance.xml
libvirt_install.xml
roles/
ssh_config
The $KVM_VM_INSTANCES environment variable defines the directory used to store all virtual machines directories (by default /srv/vms/instances). The directory name equals the host name (FQDN) of the virtual machine it contains. In the example above the directory is called lxdev01.devops.test. Note that in the default configuration virtual machines have the domain name devops.test.
This software makes it easy to share virtual machine templates among co-workers. (Create your own virtual machine template following these instructions.) Simply define the location to download the template archives from using the shell environment variable $KVM_REMOTE_IMAGES (note that SCP is used to download files, in case you wonder about the syntax of the source path):
$ export [email protected]:/path/to/the/templates
Echo the variable to check if it is set correctly. List virtual machine templates available at the remote location with:
$ echo $KVM_REMOTE_IMAGES
[... SNIP ...]
$ vm template remote list
debian32-4.0.9-server.kvm.tgz
[... SNIP ...]
debian64-6.0.4-basic.kvm.tgz
debian64-6.0.4-chef-client-0.10.8.kvm.tgz
ubuntu64-11.04-desktop.kvm.tgz
Now you can download on of the available templates:
$ vm template remote download debian64-6.0.4-basic.kvm.tgz
[... SNIP ...]
Virtual machine templates will be stored in/srv/vms/images/ by default.
When a virtual machine template is available on your computer you can clone it and start a virtual machine instance with the clone command. (Once you see that the instance is running it may need some time until it is booted and ready for login.)
$ vm clone debian64-6.0.4-basic lxdev01
Booting........lxdev01.devops.gsi.de running
$ vm login
[... SNIP ...]
You can open a console session to the started virtual machine instance with login command. A listing of the status of all virtual machine instances known to the system can be displayed with status command:
$ vm status
lxdev01.devops.test running
lxcm01.devops.test shut off
Use the commands start and stop to boot and shutdown a specific instance. It is very important to remember that in order to manipulate a particular virtual machine instance you need to change into its container directory! For example to work with an instance called lxcm01.devops.test you would need to do:
$ vm cd lxcm01
$ vm start
Start and stop only power on and off a specific instance. The clone command deploys a virtual machine persistently. This means that stopped virtual machine instances are still registered in the system. In order to remove them permanently it necessary to use the command remove.