Virtual Machine Hosting
This is a legacy service. Use the OpenStack platform instead.
Managing your VM
After logging in to the oVirt VM portal using your university credentials (specify h-da.de as profile), you have access to a graphical or serial console and can start or shutdown your VM.
Note that access to the management portal is only available within the department network or via vpn.
Access graphical console
To access the local console (e.g. in case of emergency), the virt-viewer/remote-viewer program is required.
- Linux: install package virt-viewer package in Debian/Fedora/… (e.g.
apt-get install virt-viewer
) - Windows: virt-viewer-x86-10.0-1.0.msi
- macOS:
brew tap jeffreywildman/homebrew-virt-manager && brew install virt-viewer
- Other: build from sources
Clicking the Console button in the oVirt VM portal should result in a file
named console.vv
. Open it with virt-viewer to connect to the VM console.
Access serial console
Prerequisite: you have entered your SSH public key in the oVirt VM portal (choose Options beneath the user icon on the top-right of your screen).
You can connect to a VM's serial console through a proxy service that handles authentication and abstracts away the need to locate the actual hypervisor host running your VM.
ssh -p 2222 ovirt-vmconsole@ovirt.fbi.h-da.de connect --vm-name $NAME
$NAME is the VM name as displayed in the web portal. To view a text-based menu
system for choosing a VM to connect to, leave off the connect --vm-name …
part.
SSH host key fingerprints for ovirt.fbi.h-da.de
256 SHA256:rl5ZX7kGKSfhL7CRIv8q6dme9m+Icc8lBvzvuHRlbVQ (ECDSA)
256 SHA256:MxL8Ji/bvOVA/FQrXwe5pPpfkqXJMYD9NlFD84sFD58 (ED25519)
2048 SHA256:o5s97g0cs6VkI0jUZS7e6rWri7bYu7eN33kxTooU0Hk (RSA)
Creating snapshots
Using the the oVirt VM portal, you can create snapshot for your VMs (and restore them on demand).
Opening the detail view for one of your VMs, you should see the snapshots section on the right-hand side:
When your VM is powered down, snapshot creation should happen almost instantly upon pressing the New snapshot button.
Creating a snapshot while the VM is running requires cooperation from the guest system to ensure that the snapshot contains a clean file system. This guest side of this cooperation is implemented as part of the QEMU and oVirt guest agent software which should be running within your VM. This is the case for virtual machines derived from one of the ITS-provided templates but may yet have to be setup if you installed the guest operating system for yourself.