Screenshots

The host summary window lists all virtual machines on all connections and their current resource utilization. The set of displayed fields for resource utilization can be configured, showing/hiding metrics as required. Double clicking on a domain brings up that guest's graphical console. The details button will display the domain's full performance statistics and hardware configuration.

This is also where the Guest Creation Wizard is launched.

The guest details dialog presents graphs of the live resource utilization data available from the hypervisor. The UUID is a globally unique identifier for the VM which remains with it even across migrations.

The guest hardware dialog is where changes can be made to the resource allocation, or virtual device setup of a guest domain. Some aspects (memory, virtual cpu count) may be tunable on the fly for supported hypervisors. Others will be saved, to be applied next time the domain is started.

The available screenshots show the memory, virtual cpu, boot options, and cdrom configuration screens. This screen is also where the Add Hardware Wizard is launched from.

The graphical console is a VNC connection to the guest, which is set up by default in during guest creation. If authentication is required to access the display, this will be prompted for before allowing access to the display. The graphical console is currently available for all supported virt-manager guests. Graphical scaling is also supported.

The serial port is connected the paravirtualized guest's text console, allowing text-mode installs to be performed. The serial console for the guest is simply accessed via a Psuedo-TTY under /dev/pts, and uses the VTE widget for display purposes. This is currently only available for paravirtualized guests, but will soon be supported for all virt-manager guests.

This is the dialog for opening a connection to a hypervisor. Remote connections are supported (see the Virt Manager Wiki for examples). There is no URI field to enter a generic libvirt URI, but one can be specified on the command line.

The connection performance page shows the combined CPU & memory usage of all active virtual machines on that connection. It also provides some basic stats about the machine's resources and hypervisor type, as well as an option to autostart the connection when virt-manager is run.

Each host can have a number of virtual networks defined. These networks provide a way for virtual machines to communicate without requiring a bridge to the physical networking. A virtual network can optionally allow outgoing traffic NAT'd to the LAN. The virtual networks are automatically provided with DHCP and DNS services.

There are only a few preferences needed in the manager application, most relating to the behaviour of the virtual console. It is possible to make virt-manager grab all keyboard input when a console is active - this lets its trap special shortcut keys that would usually be processed by the host window manager & send them to the guest. It is also possible to make it automatically popup a console window when a guest starts running.