valine puts some of the most universally-useful features of virsh into the hands of mere mortals like us
- Start, shutdown, force-off, hibernate, and console into a guest
- Create a new qcow or LVM snapshot from a guest's primary storage
- Instantaneously revert or switch between a guest's snapshots
- Change the media on a guest's cdrom (or eject it)
- Completely delete a guest (along with all storage)
Of course the real beauty of all this is that it's tied together with automagic bash tab-completion. Take a look at the following screenshot, noting that Enter was only pressed twice (at the very beginning):
valine uses virsh and qemu-img (and potentially lvm) commands to inspect local virtual machines. I designed this for me and that's my use-case. If there's interest and someone pays me to, I would happily port this to python and do the work possible to get it working with remote hypervisors and maybe even RHEV.
$ valine --help
Usage: valine
valine DOMAIN
valine DOMAIN new-snap [SNAP] [--off] [--size LVSIZE]
valine DOMAIN revert-snap [SNAP] [--off]
valine DOMAIN Delete-snap SNAP
valine DOMAIN {start|Shutdown|Hard-reboot|hibernate|destroy|NUKE}
valine DOMAIN {console|loop-ssh}
valine DOMAIN Change-media [/path/to/iso]
valine DOMAIN {set-maxmem|set-mem} SIZE[k|M|G|T]
valine --all {new-snap|revert-snap|start|Shutdown|Hard-reboot|
hibernate|destroy}
Easy qcow & LVM snapshot mgmt of libvirt guests w/ intelligent tab-completion
With no subcommands:
┐
│valine
│ • Display summary of all domains & their storage (including snapshots)
│
│valine DOMAIN
│ • Show virsh dominfo & domblklist along with snapshot details
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Snapshotting with valine:
┐
│valine DOMAIN {n|new-snap} [SNAP] [--off] [--size LVSIZE] (NO confirmation)
│ • If provided, SNAP will be the name of the new snapshot
│ • Otherwise, name will be auto-generated
│ • Wait for DOMAIN to shut down
│ • Determine storage type
│ • If QCOW2 storage:
│ • Create new embedded snapshot w/ virsh snapshot-create-as
│ (Doing this more than once always leads to nested snapshots)
│ • If LVM storage:
│ • Check if current storage LV is thin-provisioned
│ • If so, create a new thin LV snapshot from it (no size needed)
│ • If not, size will be LVSIZE (default 2GiB) and
│ • Check if current storage LV is a snapshot
│ • If so, create a new snapshot of its origin
│ • If not, create a new snapshot of it
│ • Redfine DOMAIN xml to use the newly-created snapshot
│ • Add new snapshot to cfgfile in /etc/valine/
│ • If not --off:
│ • Starts DOMAIN with new snapshot
│
│valine DOMAIN {r|revert-snap} [--off] (NO confirmation)
│ • Wait for DOMAIN to be destroyed
│ • If QCOW2 storage:
│ • Revert current snapshot to original pristine state using
│ virsh snapshot-revert DOMAIN --current
│ • If LVM storage:
│ • Remove current snapshot LV (lvremove) & recreate it from its origin
│ • Update creation date/time of snapshot in cfgfile (/etc/valine/)
│ • If not --off:
│ • Starts DOMAIN with new snapshot
│
│valine DOMAIN {r|revert-snap} SNAP [--off] (NO confirmation)
│ • If QCOW2 storage, SNAP should be an embedded snapshot name:
│ • Wait for DOMAIN to be destroyed
│ • Revert SNAP to original pristine state and set it as current, using
│ virsh snapshot-revert DOMAIN SNAP
│ • If LVM storage, SNAP should be the LV name [only] of an LVM logvol:
│ • Prompt for whether to shut down or destroy DOMAIN
│ • Find SNAP in /etc/valine/DOMAIN & confirm it's available with lvs
│ • Edit 'source dev' definition in DOMAIN xml to point to SNAP,
│ whether it's a snapshot or a normal LVM logvol, using
│ virsh dumpxml; sed; virsh undefine; virsh define
│ • If not --off:
│ • Starts DOMAIN with fresh snapshot or different LVM storage
│
│valine DOMAIN {D|Delete-snap} SNAP (YES confirmation)
│ • If QCOW2 storage, SNAP should be an embedded snapshot name:
│ • Check if SNAP is the current snapshot
│ • If so, give warning deleting current SNAP is not recommended
│ • Delete SNAP using: virsh snapshot-delete DOMAIN SNAP
│ • If LVM storage, SNAP should be the LV name [only] of an LVM logvol:
│ • Abort with warning if SNAP is the current storage
│ • Remove current snapshot LV (lvremove) & remove it from cfgfile
│
│For more on managing snapshots with virsh:
│ Virtualization Deployment & Administration Guide @ http://red.ht/1kwfbJs
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Starting/stopping/saving/deleting domains with valine:
┐
│valine DOMAIN {s|start}
│
│valine DOMAIN {S|Shutdown}
│ • Attempt a graceful shutdown via acpi signaling
│
│valine DOMAIN {H|Hard-reboot}
│ • Perform hard power reset (immediate reboot)
│
│valine DOMAIN {d|destroy}
│ • Cut the power (immediate shutdown)
│
│valine DOMAIN {h|hibernate}
│ • Save RAM to statefile via virsh managedsave DOMAIN
│
│valine DOMAIN {N|NUKE}
│ • Completely removes a VM by executing:
│ • virsh destroy DOMAIN
│ • virsh undefine DOMAIN --snapshots-metadata --remove-all-storage \
│ --nvram --managed-save
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Accessing domains with valine:
┐
│valine DOMAIN {c|console}
│ • Open serial console
│
│valine DOMAIN {l|loop-ssh}
│ • Keep trying to ssh to DOMAIN until success
│ (Uses 'until ssh DOMAIN; do sleep 2; done' loop)
│ This assumes DOMAIN is reachable via DNS or ssh-config
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Making changes to domains with valine:
┐
│valine DOMAIN {C|Change-media} [/path/to/iso]
│ • Insert new iso file (requires existing cdrom)
│ • If no iso specified, eject existing
│
│valine DOMAIN set-maxmem SIZE[k|M|G|T]
│ • Change the maximum memory allocation limit for DOMAIN
│ • Changes to this setting only take effect after DOMAIN is powered off
│ • SIZE suffix defaults to 'k' (i.e., kibibytes)
│
│valine DOMAIN set-mem SIZE[k|M|G|T]
│ • Change the current memory allocation limit for DOMAIN
│ • Changes to this setting take effect immediately
│ • SIZE suffix defaults to 'k' (i.e., kibibytes)
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Managing ALL domains at once with valine:
┐
│valine --all {n|new-snap} | {r|revert-snap} | {s|start} | {S|Shutdown} |
│ {H|Hard-reboot} | {h|hibernate} | {d|destroy}
│Replace DOMAIN with '--all' (or '-a') to operate on all detected domains in
│parallel (jobs are backgrounded, verbose output is lessened, and cancelling
│requires double Ctrl-c)
│Note: Does not work with cmds: console, Delete-snap, NUKE, set-maxmem, set-mem
│As above, the --off switch is optional with new-snap and revert-snap
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Version info: valine v0.7.4 last mod 2016/03/29
See <http://github.com/ryran/valine> to report bugs or suggestions