Edit a VM

Perform this task to reconfigure the VM with software and hardware options.

Restrictions and guidelines

If you select a high-speed hard disk for a VM, the high-speed disk can be used after you update its driver. For more information, see "FAQ."

If the number of CPUs has not been increased for a VM since creation, you cannot decrease the number of CPUs for the VM. When you scale down CPUs for a VM, make sure the number of CPUs after CPU scale-down is not smaller than the number of CPUs specified during VM creation.

If you add or delete a high-speed disk for a running VM, the operation takes effect immediately. If you add or delete other types of disks for the VM, the operation takes effect when the VM starts again.

When you delete a NIC from a running VM, the NIC is deleted immediately if the operating system of the VM supports online NIC deletion. The NIC is deleted on the next startup if the operating system of the VM does not support online NIC deletion.

To avoid VM or host errors, do not directly remove the USB device from a host if the host contains a running VM using the USB device.

After you mount an image file to the virtual drive and open the drive from the VM console, display failure might occur. To resolve this issue, eject the drive, and then re-mount the image file to the drive from the VM console or from the VM editing page.

As a best practice, use the following procedure to change the bus type for the disk of a VM:

Shut down the VM without powering it off.

Delete the disk on the VM editing page.

Add a disk with the desired bus type.

Select the disk file (block device) of the deleted disk.

Start the VM.

For a VM in a disk backup disaster recovery protection group, you must reboot the disaster recovery client of the VM after you edit the network information for the VM.

After you take an external snapshot for a VM, you cannot edit the disk mode of the VM.

For ARM hosts restored from an old version through template deployment, upgrade, or backup, they do not support adding hardware devices online.

If the operating system version of a VM is outdated, you might fail to disable the anti-virus feature of the VM while the VM is running. In this case, first shut down the VM, and then disable the anti-virus feature.

Procedure

On the top navigation bar, click Resources.

From the left navigation pane, select Compute > Host Pool Name > Cluster Name > Host Name > VM Name or Compute > Host Pool Name > Host Name > VM Name.

Click Edit.

Click the tabs to edit the settings of the VM.

Click Apply after you edit the settings on a tab.

To add hardware facilities for the VM, click Add Hardware.

To delete a hardware facility for the VM, select the hardware facility from the left tab tree, click Delete Hardware, and then click OK in the dialog box that opens.

Parameters

x86 hosts

Basic settings

Alias: Enter an alias for the VM. Chinese characters are supported.

Auto Migration: Enable this feature to enable the VM to automatically migrate in the cluster after the DRS and DPM policies take effect.

HA: Click Yes or No to enable or disable HA for the VM. If you select No, the VM will not be managed by cluster HA. By default, Yes is selected. This parameter is available only when the cluster is enabled with HA.

Time Sync: Click Yes or No to enable or disable time synchronization between the VM and the host where the VM resides. If you select Yes, the system time of the VM is automatically synchronized to the system time of the host when their system time is different.

CAStools Upgrade: Enable this feature to enable the system to automatically upgrade the CAStools of the VM. After you enable this feature for a VM, the system upgrades the CAStools for the VM at one o'clock a.m. the VM time by default. If you want to upgrade the CAStools for the VMs at the same time, you must enable the time synchronization feature.

Clock Type: Select a clock type. Options include World Clock and Local Clock. To set the local system time, select the local clock. To set the UTC time, select the world clock.

I/O Priority: Select the priority for the VM to read and write disks of the host to which the VM is attached. When multiple VMs are accessing the disks of the host to perform read and write operations, VMs with a high I/O priority take precedence.

Startup Priority: Select a startup priority for the VM. When a host in an HA-enabled cluster fails, the system migrates the VMs on the host based on their startup priorities. This parameter is available only when the host to which the VM is attached is in an HA-enabled cluster.

Blue Screen Policy: Select the action to take on the VM after the VM fails. To use the blue screen policy, you must enable HA and install CAStools for the VM.

No processing—Not take any action.

Restart—Restart the VM.

Failover—Migrate the VM to another host in the cluster.

CAStools Type: Select a CAStools type.

Hardware Version: Select the QEMU version used by the VM. The larger the value, the later the version. After the management platform is upgraded, the hardware version of the VM is also upgraded. After the upgrade, the hardware of the VM might be incompatible with its OS, and a blue screen or boot failure might occur. To solve this issue, roll back the hardware version of the VM to the original version.

Integrity Check: Configure whether to enable integrity check. Integrity check verifies integrity of the disks of a VM when the VM starts. If integrity check fails, the VM cannot start. Disk integrity check might cost a long time.

CPU settings

CPUs: Set the number of CPUs for the VM, which cannot be more than the maximum number of CPUs on the host. If you change the number of CPUs on a VM that supports hot-add of CPUs, the operating system of the VM might operate slowly for 3 to 5 seconds. For a Linux VM, do not perform CPU hot-add during VM startup. Windows 7 supports a maximum of two CPUs. To improve processing performance, you can set multiple cores for each CPU.

CPU Cores: Specify the number of CPU cores.

Bind Physical CPU: Bind the vCPUs of the VM to one or multiple physical CPUs of the host. After that, the VM can use only the bound physical CPUs. To avoid misbindings between vCPUs and NUMA nodes as well as VM startup failures, do not disable hyper-threading on the host after binding vCPUs to physical CPUs.

Operating Mode: Select a CPU operating mode. You can configure the default CPU mode on the system parameters page.

Compatible—Virtualizes physical CPUs of different models into vCPUs of the same model. This mode features good migration compatibility.

Host Matching—Virtualizes physical CPUs of different models into vCPUs of different models. This mode features bad compatibility but provides better performance for Oss of VMs than the Compatible mode.

Straight-Through—Enables the VM to access the physical CPUs directly. This mode features bad compatibility but provides better performance for OSs of VMs than the Compatible and Host Matching modes. To migrate a VM that uses the passthrough CPU operating mode, the source and destination hosts must use CPUs of the same model.

Max. CPUs: Set the maximum CPUs can be assigned to the VM, which is the number of CPU sockets multiplied by the number of CPU cores.

Architecture: Select a CPU architecture. This parameter is available only when you select Compatible as the CPU operating mode. The 32-bit architecture supports only 32-bit operating systems. If you select the 32-bit architecture for a VM using a 64-bit operating system, the VM cannot be started after being shut down.

Scheduling Priority: Select a priority for the processes on the VM to preempt physical CPU resources. You can edit the scheduling priority for an online VM.

Reserve: Enter the number of CPUs on the host to reserve for the VM.

Limit: Enter the maximum host CPU frequency that a single CPU core of the VM can use.

Overall CPU Limit: Select whether to enable overall CPU limit. For example, if you set maximum host CPU frequency that a single CPU core can use to 200 MHz and enable overall CPU limit for a VM has 4 CPU cores, the maximum host CPU frequency is 800 MHz for both the VM and a single CPU core of the VM.

Online Scale Down: Select whether to enable online CPU scale-down. A VM supports online CPU scale-down only when its operating system supports online CPU scale-down. If the number of CPUs has not been increased for a VM since creation, you cannot decrease the number of CPUs for the VM. When you scale down CPUs for a VM, make sure the number of CPUs after CPU scale-down is not smaller than the number of CPUs specified during VM creation.

Intel RDT Noisy Neighbor Quieting: Select whether to enable Intel RDT noisy neighbor quieting. With this feature enabled, a single VM can use up to 20% of the CPU cache and each vCPU can use up to 10% of the memory bandwidth. Before enabling Intel RDT noisy neighbor quieting for a VM, you must enable this feature on the system parameter configuration page. This feature requires the support of the physical CPUs on the host to which the VM belongs.

Memory settings

Edit Quota: Edit the memory size to be assigned to the VM. This value cannot exceed the memory size of the host. If the OS of the VM supports hot-add memory (CAStools is required for some Linux operating systems), the memory added to the VM takes effect without rebooting. If the OS of the VM does not support hot-add memory, you must shut down the VM before editing the memory size. Hot-add memory is not supported for a VM if the VM uses a Linux OS, has an initial memory less than 4 GB, and has an IDE disk attached.

Reserve: Enter the memory to be reserved for the VM to the total available memory of the host in percentage. The host allocates specific memory to a VM based on the actual memory usage of the VM. You can reserve memory for a VM in case the VM needs more memory after the host memory is exhausted.

Limit: Enter the maximum host memory size that the VM can use.

Resource Priority: Select the priority for the VM to request memory resources.

Memory Ballooning: Enable or do not enable ballooning. With ballooning enabled, the system dynamically allocates host memory to VMs without shutting down VMs. After you perform memory hot-add for a VM, you cannot configure memory ballooning for the VM directly. To configure memory ballooning for the VM, you must shut down the VM, edit its memory, and starts the VM again.

HugePages: Specify whether the VM can use HugePages memory of the host.

Disk settings

Storage Format: Select a storage format. You cannot edit the storage format if the VM is running, has snapshots, or has multi-level image files.

Storage: Edit the storage size of the VM.

The storage size you specified in this field defines the size of the user data space. The VM disk image file also contains system space. The used space equals the VM disk image file size, which is the system space size plus the user data space size. Therefore, the used space size might be larger than the configured storage size.

You cannot edit the disk size of a VM if the VM has snapshots or multi-level image files or the provision mode is eager zeroed or lazy zeroed.

To avoid data input/output failure when you expand the high-speed disk of a running VM, make sure no data is being transmitted.

Provision: Storage volume provision mode. This parameter cannot be modified if the VM is in running state, the VM has snapshots, or the disk of the VM has multi-level image files. This parameter is not available if the disk type is block device.

Disk Cluster Size: Set the smallest amount of disk space that can be used to store a file. If a file is larger than a disk cluster, it is stored in multiple disk clusters. If a file is smaller than a disk cluster, it is stored in a dedicated disk cluster. A shared file system is mainly used to store VM image files. As a best practice, set the value of this parameter as large as possible to enhance disk read performance and save disk space. This parameter cannot be modified if the VM is in running state, the VM has snapshots, or the disk of the VM has multi-level image files. This parameter is not available if the disk type is block device.

Disk Mode: Select whether to include the VM's disk in external snapshots. This parameter is available only when the VM uses a file-type disk.

Dependent—Includes the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is also restored.

Independent-Persistent—Does not include the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is not restored.

I/O Limit: Enter the average I/O read and write rate limits in KBps.

IOPS Limit: Enter the average IOPS read and write limits.

Cache Mode: Select a VM data cache mode.

Directsync—The VM reads and writes through the physical disk.

Writethrough—The VM writes data to the host cache, and then to the physical disk.

Writeback—The VM writes data to the VM cache, then to the host cache, and finally to the physical disk.

None—The VM writes data to the VM cache, and then to the physical disk. By default, the cache mode is none when the disk format is qcow2, raw, or block device (including RBD).

Serial Number: Enter the serial number of the disk.

Network settings

vSwitch: Select a virtual switch for the VM. A VM that uses a DPDK vSwitch does not support virtual firewalls.

Port Profile: Select a port profile for the VM. The ACL configuration in the port profile does not take effect when virtual firewalls are configured.

Virtual Firewall: Select virtual firewalls for the VM. You can rearrange the virtual firewalls by dragging and dropping to change their priorities. To increase the priority of a virtual firewall, move it downwards. To decrease the priority of a virtual firewall, move it upwards. The default action of a virtual firewall is deny. You can click Add to add more virtual firewalls. For information about virtual firewall configuration, see "Manage vFirewalls" The incoming and outgoing data packets of the VM will be filtered based on the firewall rules.

You can edit the default firewall action only when both denylist and allowlist firewall rules are configured.

MAC: Configure the MAC address of the VM.

IPv4/IPv6 Info: Configure the network parameters for the VM.

IP-MAC Binding—Assign an IP address to the vNIC and bind the IP address to the MAC address of the vNIC. The VM can communicate over the network only by using the bound IP address and MAC address. IP-MAC binding prevents attackers from sending forged IP packets by using the IP address or MAC address of the VM.

Manually Specify—Configure the network parameters through CAStools.

DHCP—Configure the network parameters through DHCP. Make sure the VM is installed with CAStools and CAStools does not conflict with other services. For example, before configuring network settings for a Linux VM, you must disable NetworkManager.

Device Model: Select a NIC type. This parameter can be modified if the current NIC type is common, high-speed, or Intel e1000. This parameter cannot be modified if the current NIC type is SR-IOV passthrough.

Fast Forwarding: Enable fast forwarding to improve the network performance of the VM. This feature is available only for high-speed NICs.

MTU: Set the MTU for the VM NIC.

SR-IOV passthrough NICs

Device Model: Specify a network adapter type. This parameter cannot be edited when the VM's NIC is an SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

PCI Device: Set the SR-IOV NIC address. This parameter cannot be edited when the VM's NIC is an SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

SR-IOV Resource Pool: Specify the SR-IOV resource pool name. This parameter cannot be edited when the VM's NIC is an SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

Physical Interface: Specify a physical NIC. This parameter cannot be edited when the VM's NIC is an SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

MAC Address: Set the MAC address for the VM.

Driver Type: Specify a driver type for the SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

VLAN ID: Specify a VLAN ID for the SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

If a VLAN is configured for an SR-IOV passthrough NIC on a VM, packets sent by the VM will be tagged by a VF and sent to the peer. Upon receiving packets with the same VLAN tag, the peer will strip the tag and send the packets to the source VM. Packets with a different VLAN tag will be discarded.

If no VLAN is configured for an SR-IOV passthrough NIC on a VM, VLAN packets from that VM can be transmitted transparently.

Other settings

Console

Enable VNC Proxy: Enable or disable VNC proxy for the VM. You can click the icon to configure the VNC proxy server parameters, including VNC proxy server address, login name, and password. To access CVM through HTTPS, you must specify the management IP address of the CVM host as the proxy server's address. If the VNC proxy server is on a host managed by CVM, the login name and password do not take effect.

Graphics card settings

Device Model: Select a graphics card model. If the VM OS is Fedora19 or Fedora20, do not select Cirrus, which might cause display error.

Serial port settings

Port Monitoring: Enable or disable the port monitoring feature.

Boot device settings

Auto Start: Enable this feature to configure the VM to start immediately after its host starts.

Boot Firmware: Select the boot mode. If you select UEFI and multiple CD-COM drives are mounted with different Windows system installation files, the VM might not be booted from the boot device with the highest priority.

VM boot device: Select the boot device for the VM.

vNUMA settings

vNUMA: Configure whether to enable vNUMA. If you enable vNUMA, the virtual NUMA node preferentially uses the CPU and memory resources of the same physical NUMA node. If you enable vNUMA, you must make sure the VM is offline and all vCPUs have been bound to physical CPUs. After vNUMA is enabled, you cannot change the CPU quantity, memory size, or hugepages configuration.

Advanced settings

Secrecy settings

Security Level: Select a secret level for the VM.

Anti-Virus

Enable Anti-Virus: Enable this feature to prevent the VM from virus attacks. To disable this feature, first shut down the VM.

The VM anti-virus settings depend on the anti-virus settings of CVM For more information, see "Configure the anti-virus service."

USB Redirection Policy

USB Redirection: Enable this feature to enable the VM to use the USB devices of the client in remote desktop sessions.

USB Redirections: Specify the number of USB devices on the client that the VM can use in remote desktop sessions.

SPICE Client Access Policy

Enable SSL: Enable this feature to enable SSL encryption for SPICE clients.

SSL Encrypted Channel Name: Select one or multiple channels.

Hardware settings

Hardware type: Select a hardware type.

Storage

Bus Type: Select a bus type for the disk. The system supports USB 3.0 controller by default. If the system cannot recognize a USB device, you must manually install a driver. High-speed SCSI disks can provide better performance than SCSI disks. The floppy drive bus type is applicable to VFD files.

Type: Select a disk type.

File Path: Select a storage volume path.

Block Device Path: Select a block device path.

Local Disk Path: Select a local disk path of the host.

Size: Disk size.

Cache Mode: Select a cache mode. By default, the cache mode is none when the disk format is qcow2, raw, or block device (including RBD).

Disk Mode: Select whether to include the VM's disk in external snapshots. This parameter is available only when the VM uses a file-type disk.

Dependent—Includes the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is also restored.

Independent-Persistent—Does not include the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is not restored.

I/O Limit: Specify the maximum read/write rate in KBps for the disk. If you leave this field empty, the read/write rate of the disk is not limited.

IOPS Limit: Specify the maximum IOPS. If you leave this field empty, the IOPS is not limited.

Serial Number: Enter the serial number of the disk.

Network

Device Model: Select a NIC type.

Fast Forwarding: Enable fast forwarding to improve the network performance of the VM. This feature is available only for high-speed NICs.

Queue Number: Set the number of queues for the virtual NIC. Multi-queue support can enhance data processing performance for the virtual NIC. The default value is 1, and the maximum value is the vCPU count × cores. This parameter is available for high-speed NICs with fast forwarding enabled.

vSwitch: Select a virtual switch for the VM.

Port Profile: Select a port profile for the VM.

Virtual Firewall: Select a virtual firewall for the VM. The incoming and outgoing data packets of the VM will be filtered based on the firewall rules.

MAC Assignment: Select a MAC address assignment mode.

MAC: Enter the MAC address of the VM's NIC. This parameter can be configured only when you select the manual MAC address assignment mode.

IPv4/IPv6 Bound to the NIC: Enter the IPv4 or IPv6 address bound to the MAC address of the VM’s NIC. If the IPv4 or IPv6 address specified for the VM's NIC is different from the bound IPv4 or IPv6 address, the NIC cannot communicate correctly.

MTU: Set the MTU for the VM NIC. This parameter is applicable only to common, high-speed, and Intel e1000 NICs.

Driver Type: Select a driver type for the SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

Physical NIC: Select a physical NIC for the SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

VLAN ID: Specify a VLAN for an SR-IOV passthrough NIC.

Input

Type: Select a device type.

Bus: Bus used by the input device.

Console

Type: Select a console type.

Password: Enter the console login password.

Enable VNC Proxy: Enable or disable VNC proxy.

Port Assignment: Select a port assignment mode.

Port: Specify the console port number. This parameter is available when you select the manual port assignment mode.

Use Host Keyboard Mapping: Configure whether the disk mapping mode of the console is the same as that of the host.

Other: Select a keyboard mapping mode.

Audio card

Type: Select an audio card type.

Graphics card

Type: Type of the graphics card. This field is Qxl. If a VM has multiple graphics cards, the system will set the type of all the graphics cards to Qxl.

USB device

Controller: Select a controller type.

Device Name: Name of the USB device.

Supplier: Manufacturer of the USB device.

Product Name: USB product name.

Remote USB device

Controller: Select a controller type.

Remote USB View: Click this button to view the usage information of the remote USB devices in the cluster.

Device Name: Name of the remote USB device.

Supplier: Manufacturer of the remote USB device.

Product Name: Remote USB product name.

State: State of the remote USB device.

Action: Click the icons in this column to start or suspend a USB device.

PCI device

As a best practice to ensure the startup of a VM, follow these restrictions when you add PCI devices for a VM:

If the memory size of a VM is smaller than 2 GB, the total memory size of PCI devices added to the VM cannot exceed 2 GB.

If the memory size of a VM is larger than 2 GB, the total memory size of PCI devices added to the VM cannot exceed 1 GB.

Configure the following parameters to add a PCI device:

Driver Type: Select a driver type for the PCI device.

Device Name: Name of the PCI device.

Supplier: Manufacturer of PCI device.

Product Name: PCI product name.

Physical Interface: Physical NIC name.

Serial port

Type: Select a serial port type.

Serial Port: Specify the serial port number.

Path: Enter the serial port path. To add a dev serial port, you must enter an available path, /dev/ttyS0, for example. If you do not enter an available path, the VM cannot start.

TPM device

TPM Device: Trusted Platform Module (TPM) provides trusted computing services. Trusted computing aims to protect the system from untrusted codes.

Location: Select the location of the TPM device.

vTPM device

vTPM Device: Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) is a virtual trusted platform module that can function as a dedicated security store for keys and measurements. It effectively protects VMs to prevent unauthorized user access.

Device Version: Select TPM protocol version 1.2 or 2.0 according to the guest OS's compatibility with the TPM protocol.

Watchdog

Action: Select the action to take on VMs upon receipt of interrupt requests.

GPU device

A GPU device acts a CPU to process images so that the CPU can perform other tasks.

Resource Pool: Select a resource pool, which contains all available GPUs in the cluster. If you select a GPU resource pool, the VM accesses the physical GPU resources of the host through GPU passthrough. If you select a vGPU resource pool, the VM accesses the vGPU resources of the host.

Service Template: Select a service template. The service template defines the rule that how VMs use the GPU resources on the host. The host allocates these resources to VMs based on the priorities of the VMs.

Driver Type: Select a driver type for the GPU device.

Exclusive Mode: Select whether the VM can exclusively use the specified GPU/vGPU resources. If you select Yes, the GPU/vGPU resources cannot be used by any other VMs. This feature is available only when the host has available GPU/vGPU resources that have been added to the selected GPU resource pool. To migrate a VM when this feature is enabled, make sure sufficient GPU/vGPU resources are available on the target host. VMs that use vGPUs can be migrated when they are in running state. VMs that use GPUs can be migrated only when they are not running.

Resource Count: Set the maximum number of GPU/vGPU resources that can be used by the VM. The value depends on the resource pool type and state of the exclusive mode feature:

If you select a vGPU resource pool, only 1 is available.

If you select a GPU resource pool and exclusive mode is disabled, the value is the maximum number of GPUs on a single host in the resource pool. For example, if the resource pool has three hosts, and the hosts have three, two, and two GPUs, respectively, the value is 3.

If you select a GPU resource pool and exclusive mode is enabled, the value is the number of available GPUs on the host attached to the VM.

ARM hosts