How to edit Virtual Machine Hardware in RedHat Virtualization

To permanently change the settings of a virtual machine, navigate to the Virtual Machines tab of the RHVM web interface and select the machine to edit. Right-click the virtual machine and select Edit from the menu. This brings up the Edit Virtual Machine dialog.

The Edit Virtual Machine dialog is nearly identical to the New Virtual Machine dialog discussed earlier. Please note that some changes require that the virtual machine is shut down and restarted.

Changes to these settings are applied immediately, even if the virtual machine is running:

• Name
• Description
• Comment
• Optimized for (Desktop or Server)
• Delete Protection
• Network Interfaces
• Memory Size – (You can hot-plug memory while the machine is running, but unplugging memory is not currently supported by RHV.)
• Virtual Sockets – (You can hot-plug vCPUs, but the operating system must support this feature. You can also unplug vCPUs, but only if they were hot-plugged. You can not unplug below the number of vCPUs the virtual machine had when it was created.)
• Use custom migration downtime
• Highly Available
• Priority for Run/Migration queue
• Disable strict user checking
• Icon

All other settings are only applied when the virtual machine is shut down and restarted. Pending changes are marked with a circular orange icon on the virtual machine list in the Administration Portal.

To summarize the procedure for editing virtual machines:

1. Find the appropriate machine on the virtual machine list and click its name to select it.
2. Click the Edit button.
3. Change the required settings.
4. Click OK to accept the changes.
5. If the Next Start Configuration dialog window appears, click OK button.

Adding network interfaces

Your virtual machines connect their network interfaces to logical networks in your RHV environment. You can create multiple network interfaces on your virtual machines, each of which can be associated with a specific logical network.

To add network interfaces to a virtual machine, follow this procedure:

1. Log in to the Administration Portal and click the Virtual Machine tab. Select the virtual machine to which you want to add the network interface.
2. Click the Network Interfaces tab in the lower part of the interface.
3. Click the New button.
4. In the New Network Interface dialog window, specify the Name of the network interface.
5. Using the drop-down list, select the logical network to which you want to connect the new network interface.
6. Make sure that the link status of the new network interface is marked as Up and Plugged.
7. Click the OK to create the interface and connect it to the appropriate logical network.

The network interface is hot-plugged if the machine is running. You may need to configure the new interface in the operating system.

You can edit a network interface of a running machine, but depending on the changes you make,the virtual machine might need to be restarted. To change a network card setting, select the virtual machine, and then click the Network Interfaces tab, and select the interface to edit. With the interface highlighted, click the Edit button and change the settings. Click the OK button to accept the changes.

Advanced Hardware Configuration

Using basic options, you can adjust the network interfaces attached to your virtual machine,control disk images, and adjust the number of vCPUs and amount of RAM through specifying different instance types. But the advanced options allow more sophisticated control over your virtual machine’s hardware.

In the Edit Virtual Machine window, if you select Show Advanced Options, more tabs become available on the left side of the window.

In the System tab, you can set custom numbers of vCPUs and custom memory sizes. The Advanced Parameters drop-down panel allows you to further refine the hardware on your virtual machine, specifying the number of virtual sockets, cores, threads per core, and a CPU type with a subset of the features provided by the one specified for the cluster. You can also use the Custom Emulated Machine setting to tune the apparent hardware provided by the hypervisor to the virtual machine.