Provided by: ganeti-3.0_3.0.2-1ubuntu1_all 
Name
gnt-instance - Ganeti instance administration
Synopsis
gnt-instance {command} [arguments...]
DESCRIPTION
The gnt-instance command is used for instance administration in the Ganeti system.
COMMANDS
Creation/removal/querying
ADD
add
{-t|--disk-template {diskless | file | plain | drbd | rbd}}
{--disk=*N*: {size=*VAL*[,spindles=*VAL*] | adopt=*LV*}[,options...]
| {size=*VAL*,provider=*PROVIDER*}[,param=*value*... ][,options...]
| {-s|--os-size} SIZE}
[--no-ip-check] [--no-name-check] [--no-conflicts-check]
[--no-start] [--no-install] [{--forthcoming | --commit}]
[--net=*N* [:options...] | --no-nics]
[{-B|--backend-parameters} BEPARAMS]
[{-H|--hypervisor-parameters} HYPERVISOR [: option=*value*... ]]
[{-O|--os-parameters} param=*value*... ]
[--os-parameters-private param=*value*... ]
[--os-parameters-secret param=*value*... ]
[--file-storage-dir dir_path] [--file-driver {loop | blktap | blktap2}]
{{-n--iallocator} name | {-g|--node-group} nodegroup}
{{-o|--os-type} os-type}
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
[--ignore-ipolicy]
[--no-wait-for-sync]
[{-cno}]
[{--tags [: <tag:value>... ]
{instance-name}
Creates a new instance on the specified host. The instance-name argument must be in DNS, but depending
on the bridge/routing setup, need not be in the same network as the nodes in the cluster.
The disk option specifies the parameters for the disks of the instance. The numbering of disks starts at
zero, and at least one disk needs to be passed. For each disk, either the size or the adoption source
needs to be given. The size is interpreted (when no unit is given) in mebibytes. You can also use one
of the suffixes m, g or t to specify the exact the units used; these suffixes map to mebibytes, gibibytes
and tebibytes. Each disk can also take these parameters (all optional):
spindles
How many spindles (physical disks on the node) the disk should span.
mode The access mode. Either ro (read-only) or the default rw (read-write).
name This option specifies a name for the disk, which can be used as a disk identifier. An instance
can not have two disks with the same name.
vg The LVM volume group. This works only for LVM and DRBD devices.
metavg This option specifies a different VG for the metadata device. This works only for DRBD devices.
If not specified, the default metavg of the node-group (possibly inherited from the cluster-wide
settings) will be used.
access If 'userspace', instance will access this disk directly without going through a block device,
avoiding expensive context switches with kernel space. This option works only for RBD, Gluster
and ExtStorage devices. If not specified, the default access of the node-group (possibly inherit‐
ed from the cluster-wide settings) will be used.
When creating ExtStorage disks, also arbitrary parameters can be passed, to the ExtStorage provider.
Those parameters are passed as additional comma separated options. Therefore, an ExtStorage disk provid‐
ed by provider pvdr1 with parameters param1, param2 would be passed as --disk 0:size=10G,provider=pv‐
dr1,param1=val1,param2=val2.
When using the adopt key in the disk definition, Ganeti will reuse those volumes (instead of creating new
ones) as the instance's disks. Ganeti will rename these volumes to the standard format, and (without in‐
stalling the OS) will use them as-is for the instance. This allows migrating instances from non-managed
mode (e.g. plain KVM with LVM) to being managed via Ganeti. Please note that this works only for the
`plain' disk template (see below for template details).
Alternatively, a single-disk instance can be created via the -s option which takes a single argument, the
size of the disk. This is similar to the Ganeti 1.2 version (but will only create one disk).
The minimum disk specification is therefore --disk 0:size=20G (or -s 20G when using the -s option), and a
three-disk instance can be specified as --disk 0:size=20G --disk 1:size=4G --disk 2:size=100G.
The minimum information needed to specify an ExtStorage disk are the size and the provider. For example:
--disk 0:size=20G,provider=pvdr1.
The --no-ip-check skips the checks that are done to see if the instance's IP is not already alive (i.e.
reachable from the master node).
The --no-name-check skips the check for the instance name via the resolver (e.g. in DNS or /etc/hosts,
depending on your setup). Since the name check is used to compute the IP address, if you pass this op‐
tion you must also pass the --no-ip-check option.
If you don't want the instance to automatically start after creation, this is possible via the --no-start
option. This will leave the instance down until a subsequent gnt-instance start command.
The NICs of the instances can be specified via the --net option. By default, one NIC is created for the
instance, with a random MAC, and set up according to the cluster level NIC parameters. Each NIC can take
these parameters (all optional):
mac either a value or 'generate' to generate a new unique MAC
ip specifies the IP address assigned to the instance from the Ganeti side (this is not necessarily
what the instance will use, but what the node expects the instance to use). Note that if an IP in
the range of a network configured with gnt-network(8) is used, and the NIC is not already connect‐
ed to it, this network has to be passed in the network parameter if this NIC is meant to be con‐
nected to the said network. --no-conflicts-check can be used to override this check. The special
value pool causes Ganeti to select an IP from the network the NIC is or will be connected to. One
can pick an externally reserved IP of a network along with --no-conflict-check. Note that this IP
cannot be assigned to any other instance until it gets released.
mode specifies the connection mode for this NIC: routed, bridged or openvswitch.
link in bridged or openvswitch mode specifies the interface to attach this NIC to, in routed mode it's
intended to differentiate between different routing tables/instance groups (but the meaning is de‐
pendent on the network script, see gnt-cluster(8) for more details). Note that openvswitch sup‐
port is also hypervisor dependent.
network
derives the mode and the link from the settings of the network which is identified by its name.
If the network option is chosen, link and mode must not be specified. Note that the mode and link
depend on the network-to-nodegroup connection, thus allowing different nodegroups to be connected
to the same network in different ways.
name this option specifies a name for the NIC, which can be used as a NIC identifier. An instance can
not have two NICs with the same name.
vlan in bridged and openvswitch mode specifies the VLANs that the NIC will be connected to. To connect
as an access port use n or .n with n being the VLAN ID. To connect as an trunk port use :n[:n].
A hybrid port can be created with .n:n[:n]. For bridged mode, the bridge needs VLAN filtering en‐
abled. Assuming a bridge named gnt-br, this is accomplished by running ip link set dev gnt-br
type bridge vlan_filtering 1.
Of these "mode" and "link" are NIC parameters, and inherit their default at cluster level. Alternative‐
ly, if no network is desired for the instance, you can prevent the default of one NIC with the --no-nics
option.
The -o (--os-type) option specifies the operating system to be installed. The available operating sys‐
tems can be listed with gnt-os list. Passing --no-install will however skip the OS installation, allow‐
ing a manual import if so desired. Note that the no-installation mode will automatically disable the
start-up of the instance (without an OS, it most likely won't be able to start-up successfully).
Passing the --forthcoming option, Ganeti will not at all try to create the instance or its disks. In‐
stead the instance will only be added to the configuration, so that the resources are reserved. If the
--commit option is passed, then it is a prerequisite that an instance with that name has already been
added to the configuration as a forthcoming instance and the request is to replace this instance by the
newly created real one. Note that if the reason for reserving an instance is that DNS names still need
to be propagated, the reservation has to be done with --no-name-check and --no-ip-check as these options
are not implied by --forthcoming.
The -B (--backend-parameters) option specifies the backend parameters for the instance. If no such para‐
meters are specified, the values are inherited from the cluster. Possible parameters are:
maxmem the maximum memory size of the instance; as usual, suffixes can be used to denote the unit, other‐
wise the value is taken in mebibytes
minmem the minimum memory size of the instance; as usual, suffixes can be used to denote the unit, other‐
wise the value is taken in mebibytes
vcpus the number of VCPUs to assign to the instance (if this value makes sense for the hypervisor)
auto_balance
whether the instance is considered in the N+1 cluster checks (enough redundancy in the cluster to
survive a node failure)
always_failover
True or False, whether the instance must be failed over (shut down and rebooted) always or it may
be migrated (briefly suspended)
Note that before 2.6 Ganeti had a memory parameter, which was the only value of memory an instance could
have. With the maxmem/minmem change Ganeti guarantees that at least the minimum memory is always avail‐
able for an instance, but allows more memory to be used (up to the maximum memory) should it be free.
The -H (--hypervisor-parameters) option specified the hypervisor to use for the instance (must be one of
the enabled hypervisors on the cluster) and optionally custom parameters for this instance. If not other
options are used (i.e. the invocation is just -H NAME) the instance will inherit the cluster options.
The defaults below show the cluster defaults at cluster creation time.
The possible hypervisor options are as follows:
boot_order
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
A string value denoting the boot order. This has different meaning for the Xen HVM hypervisor and
for the KVM one.
For Xen HVM, The boot order is a string of letters listing the boot devices, with valid device
letters being:
a floppy drive
c hard disk
d CDROM drive
n network boot (PXE)
The default is not to set an HVM boot order, which is interpreted as 'dc'.
For KVM the boot order is either "floppy", "cdrom", "disk" or "network". Please note that older
versions of KVM couldn't netboot from virtio interfaces. This has been fixed in more recent ver‐
sions and is confirmed to work at least with qemu-kvm 0.11.1. Also note that if you have set the
kernel_path option, that will be used for booting, and this setting will be silently ignored.
blockdev_prefix
Valid for the Xen HVM and PVM hypervisors.
Relevant to non-pvops guest kernels, in which the disk device names are given by the host. Allows
one to specify 'xvd', which helps run Red Hat based installers, driven by anaconda.
floppy_image_path
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
The path to a floppy disk image to attach to the instance. This is useful to install Windows op‐
erating systems on Virt/IO disks because you can specify here the floppy for the drivers at in‐
stallation time.
cdrom_image_path
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
The path to a CDROM image to attach to the instance.
cdrom2_image_path
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
The path to a second CDROM image to attach to the instance. NOTE: This image can't be used to
boot the system. To do that you have to use the 'cdrom_image_path' option.
nic_type
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
This parameter determines the way the network cards are presented to the instance. The possible
options are:
• rtl8139 (default for Xen HVM) (HVM & KVM)
• ne2k_isa (HVM & KVM)
• ne2k_pci (HVM & KVM)
• i82551 (KVM)
• i82557b (KVM)
• i82559er (KVM)
• pcnet (KVM)
• e1000 (KVM)
• paravirtual (default for KVM) (HVM & KVM)
vif_type
Valid for the Xen HVM hypervisor.
This parameter specifies the vif type of the nic configuration of the instance. Unsetting the
value leads to no type being specified in the configuration. Note that this parameter only takes
effect when the 'nic_type' is not set. The possible options are:
• ioemu
• vif
scsi_controller_type
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This parameter specifies which type of SCSI controller to use. The possible options are:
• lsi [default]
• megasas
• virtio-scsi-pci
kvm_pci_reservations
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
The number of PCI slots that QEMU will manage implicitly. By default Ganeti will let QEMU use the
first 12 slots (i.e. PCI slots 0-11) on its own and will start adding disks and NICs from the
13rd slot (i.e. PCI slot 12) onwards. So by default one can add 20 PCI devices (32 - 12). To
support more than that, this hypervisor parameter should be set accordingly (e.g. to 8).
disk_type
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
This parameter determines the way the disks are presented to the instance. The possible options
are:
• ioemu [default] (HVM & KVM)
• paravirtual (HVM & KVM)
• ide (KVM)
• scsi (KVM)
• sd (KVM)
• mtd (KVM)
• pflash (KVM)
cdrom_disk_type
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This parameter determines the way the cdroms disks are presented to the instance. The default be‐
havior is to get the same value of the earlier parameter (disk_type). The possible options are:
• paravirtual
• ide
• scsi
• sd
• mtd
• pflash
vnc_bind_address
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
Specifies the address that the VNC listener for this instance should bind to. Valid values are
IPv4 addresses. Use the address 0.0.0.0 to bind to all available interfaces (this is the default)
or specify the address of one of the interfaces on the node to restrict listening to that inter‐
face.
vnc_password_file
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
Specifies the location of the file containing the password for connections using VNC. The default
is a file named vnc-cluster-password which can be found in the configuration directory.
vnc_tls
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
A boolean option that controls whether the VNC connection is secured with TLS.
vnc_x509_path
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
If vnc_tls is enabled, this options specifies the path to the x509 certificate to use.
vnc_x509_verify
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
spice_bind
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Specifies the address or interface on which the SPICE server will listen. Valid values are:
• IPv4 addresses, including 0.0.0.0 and 127.0.0.1
• IPv6 addresses, including :: and ::1
• names of network interfaces
If a network interface is specified, the SPICE server will be bound to one of the addresses of
that interface.
spice_ip_version
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Specifies which version of the IP protocol should be used by the SPICE server.
It is mainly intended to be used for specifying what kind of IP addresses should be used if a net‐
work interface with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses is specified via the spice_bind parameter. In
this case, if the spice_ip_version parameter is not used, the default IP version of the cluster
will be used.
spice_password_file
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Specifies a file containing the password that must be used when connecting via the SPICE protocol.
If the option is not specified, passwordless connections are allowed.
spice_image_compression
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Configures the SPICE lossless image compression. Valid values are:
• auto_glz
• auto_lz
• quic
• glz
• lz
• off
spice_jpeg_wan_compression
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Configures how SPICE should use the jpeg algorithm for lossy image compression on slow links.
Valid values are:
• auto
• never
• always
spice_zlib_glz_wan_compression
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Configures how SPICE should use the zlib-glz algorithm for lossy image compression on slow links.
Valid values are:
• auto
• never
• always
spice_streaming_video
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Configures how SPICE should detect video streams. Valid values are:
• off
• all
• filter
spice_playback_compression
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Configures whether SPICE should compress audio streams or not.
spice_use_tls
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Specifies that the SPICE server must use TLS to encrypt all the traffic with the client.
spice_tls_ciphers
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Specifies a list of comma-separated ciphers that SPICE should use for TLS connections. For the
format, see man cipher(1).
spice_use_vdagent
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Enables or disables passing mouse events via SPICE vdagent.
cpu_type
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This parameter determines the emulated cpu for the instance. If this parameter is empty (which is
the default configuration), it will not be passed to KVM.
Be aware of setting this parameter to "host" if you have nodes with different CPUs from each oth‐
er. Live migration may stop working in this situation.
For more information please refer to the KVM manual.
acpi Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
A boolean option that specifies if the hypervisor should enable ACPI support for this instance.
By default, ACPI is disabled.
ACPI should be enabled for user shutdown detection. See user_shutdown.
pae Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
A boolean option that specifies if the hypervisor should enable PAE support for this instance.
The default is false, disabling PAE support.
viridian
Valid for the Xen HVM hypervisor.
A boolean option that specifies if the hypervisor should enable viridian (Hyper-V) for this in‐
stance. The default is false, disabling viridian support.
use_guest_agent
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
A boolean option that specifies if the hypervisor should enable the QEMU Guest Agent protocol for
this instance. By default, the Guest Agent is disabled.
use_localtime
Valid for the Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
A boolean option that specifies if the instance should be started with its clock set to the local‐
time of the machine (when true) or to the UTC (When false). The default is false, which is useful
for Linux/Unix machines; for Windows OSes, it is recommended to enable this parameter.
kernel_path
Valid for the Xen PVM and KVM hypervisors.
This option specifies the path (on the node) to the kernel to boot the instance with. Xen PVM in‐
stances always require this, while for KVM if this option is empty, it will cause the machine to
load the kernel from its disks (and the boot will be done accordingly to boot_order).
kernel_args
Valid for the Xen PVM and KVM hypervisors.
This options specifies extra arguments to the kernel that will be loaded. This is always used for
Xen PVM, while for KVM it is only used if the kernel_path option is also specified.
The default setting for this value is simply "ro", which mounts the root disk (initially) in read-
only one. For example, setting this to single will cause the instance to start in single-user
mode.
Note that the hypervisor setting serial_console appends "console=ttyS0,<serial_speed>" to the end
of kernel_args in KVM.
initrd_path
Valid for the Xen PVM and KVM hypervisors.
This option specifies the path (on the node) to the initrd to boot the instance with. Xen PVM in‐
stances can use this always, while for KVM if this option is only used if the kernel_path option
is also specified. You can pass here either an absolute filename (the path to the initrd) if you
want to use an initrd, or use the format no_initrd_path for no initrd.
root_path
Valid for the Xen PVM and KVM hypervisors.
This options specifies the name of the root device. This is always needed for Xen PVM, while for
KVM it is only used if the kernel_path option is also specified.
Please note, that if this setting is an empty string and the hypervisor is Xen it will not be
written to the Xen configuration file
serial_console
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This boolean option specifies whether to emulate a serial console for the instance. Note that
some versions of KVM have a bug that will make an instance hang when configured to use the serial
console unless a connection is made to it within about 2 seconds of the instance's startup. For
such case it's recommended to disable this option, which is enabled by default.
Enabling serial console emulation also appends "console=ttyS0,<serial_speed>" to the end of ker‐
nel_args in KVM and may interfere with previous settings.
serial_speed
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This integer option specifies the speed of the serial console. Common values are 9600, 19200,
38400, 57600 and 115200: choose the one which works on your system. (The default is 38400 for
historical reasons, but newer versions of kvm/qemu work with 115200)
disk_cache
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
The disk cache mode. It can be either default to not pass any cache option to KVM, or one of the
KVM cache modes: none (for direct I/O), writethrough (to use the host cache but report completion
to the guest only when the host has committed the changes to disk) or writeback (to use the host
cache and report completion as soon as the data is in the host cache). Note that there are spe‐
cial considerations for the cache mode depending on version of KVM used and disk type (always raw
file under Ganeti), please refer to the KVM documentation for more details.
disk_aio
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This is an optional parameter that specifies the aio mode for the disks. KVM default is to use
the 'threads' mode, so if not explicitly specified, the native mode will not be used. Possible
values are: threads or native.
disk_discard
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
discard is one of "ignore", "unmap" or "default" and controls whether discard (also known as trim
or unmap) requests are ignored or passed to the filesystem. Some machine types may not support
discard requests. For compatibility with older qemu versions "default" will not pass any discard
option to KVM.
security_model
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
The security model for kvm. Currently one of none, user or pool. Under none, the default, noth‐
ing is done and instances are run as the Ganeti daemon user (normally root).
Under user kvm will drop privileges and become the user specified by the security_domain parame‐
ter.
Under pool a global cluster pool of users will be used, making sure no two instances share the
same user on the same node. (this mode is not implemented yet)
security_domain
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Under security model user the username to run the instance under. It must be a valid username ex‐
isting on the host.
Cannot be set under security model none or pool.
kvm_flag
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
If enabled the -enable-kvm flag is passed to kvm. If disabled -disable-kvm is passed. If unset
no flag is passed, and the default running mode for your kvm binary will be used.
mem_path
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This option passes the -mem-path argument to kvm with the path (on the node) to the mount point of
the hugetlbfs file system, along with the -mem-prealloc argument too.
use_chroot
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This boolean option determines whether to run the KVM instance in a chroot directory.
If it is set to true, an empty directory is created before starting the instance and its path is
passed via the -chroot flag to kvm. The directory is removed when the instance is stopped.
It is set to false by default.
user_shutdown
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This boolean option determines whether the KVM instance supports user shutdown detection. This
option does not necessarily require ACPI enabled, but ACPI must be enabled for users to poweroff
their KVM instances.
If it is set to true, the user can shutdown this KVM instance and its status is reported as
USER_down.
It is set to false by default.
migration_downtime
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
The maximum amount of time (in ms) a KVM instance is allowed to be frozen during a live migration,
in order to copy dirty memory pages. Default value is 30ms, but you may need to increase this
value for busy instances.
This option is only effective with kvm versions >= 87 and qemu-kvm versions >= 0.11.0.
cpu_mask
Valid for the Xen, KVM and LXC hypervisors.
The processes belonging to the given instance are only scheduled on the specified CPUs.
The format of the mask can be given in three forms. First, the word "all", which signifies the
common case where all VCPUs can live on any CPU, based on the hypervisor's decisions.
Second, a comma-separated list of CPU IDs or CPU ID ranges. The ranges are defined by a lower and
higher boundary, separated by a dash, and the boundaries are inclusive. In this form, all VCPUs
of the instance will be mapped on the selected list of CPUs. Example: 0-2,5, mapping all VCPUs
(no matter how many) onto physical CPUs 0, 1, 2 and 5.
The last form is used for explicit control of VCPU-CPU pinnings. In this form, the list of VCPU
mappings is given as a colon (:) separated list, whose elements are the possible values for the
second or first form above. In this form, the number of elements in the colon-separated list
_must equal the number of VCPUs of the instance.
Example:
# Map the entire instance to CPUs 0-2
gnt-instance modify -H cpu_mask=0-2 my-inst
# Map vCPU 0 to physical CPU 1 and vCPU 1 to CPU 3 (assuming 2 vCPUs)
gnt-instance modify -H cpu_mask=1:3 my-inst
# Pin vCPU 0 to CPUs 1 or 2, and vCPU 1 to any CPU
gnt-instance modify -H cpu_mask=1-2:all my-inst
# Pin vCPU 0 to any CPU, vCPU 1 to CPUs 1, 3, 4 or 5, and CPU 2 to
# CPU 0 (backslashes for escaping the comma)
gnt-instance modify -H cpu_mask=all:1\\,3-5:0 my-inst
# Pin entire VM to CPU 0
gnt-instance modify -H cpu_mask=0 my-inst
# Turn off CPU pinning (default setting)
gnt-instance modify -H cpu_mask=all my-inst
cpu_cap
Valid for the Xen hypervisor.
Set the maximum amount of cpu usage by the VM. The value is a percentage between 0 and (100 *
number of VCPUs). Default cap is 0: unlimited.
cpu_weight
Valid for the Xen hypervisor.
Set the cpu time ratio to be allocated to the VM. Valid values are between 1 and 65535. Default
weight is 256.
usb_mouse
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This option specifies the usb mouse type to be used. It can be "mouse" or "tablet". When using
VNC it's recommended to set it to "tablet".
keymap Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This option specifies the keyboard mapping to be used. It is only needed when using the VNC con‐
sole. For example: "fr" or "en-gb".
reboot_behavior
Valid for Xen PVM, Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
Normally if an instance reboots, the hypervisor will restart it. If this option is set to exit,
the hypervisor will treat a reboot as a shutdown instead.
It is set to reboot by default.
cpu_cores
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Number of emulated CPU cores.
cpu_threads
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Number of emulated CPU threads.
cpu_sockets
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Number of emulated CPU sockets.
soundhw
Valid for Xen PVM, Xen HVM and KVM hypervisors.
Comma separated list of emulated sounds cards, or "all" to enable all the available ones. See the
qemu(1) manpage for valid options and additional details.
cpuid Valid for the XEN hypervisor.
Modify the values returned by CPUID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPUID) instructions run within
instances.
This allows you to enable migration between nodes with different CPU attributes like cores,
threads, hyperthreading or SS4 support by hiding the extra features where needed.
See the XEN documentation for syntax and more information.
usb_devices
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Space separated list of usb devices. These can be emulated devices or passthrough ones, and each
one gets passed to kvm with its own -usbdevice option. See the qemu(1) manpage for the syntax of
the possible components. Note that values set with this parameter are split on a space character
and currently don't support quoting. For backwards compatibility reasons, the RAPI interface
keeps accepting comma separated lists too.
vga Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Emulated vga mode, passed the the kvm -vga option.
kvm_extra
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Any other option to the KVM hypervisor, useful tweaking anything that Ganeti doesn't support.
Note that values set with this parameter are split on a space character and currently don't sup‐
port quoting.
machine_version
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Use in case an instance must be booted with an exact type of machine version (due to e.g. outdat‐
ed drivers). In case it's not set the default version supported by your version of kvm is used.
migration_caps
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Enable specific migration capabilities by providing a ":" separated list of supported capabili‐
ties. QEMU version 1.7.0 defines x-rdma-pin-all, auto-converge, zero-blocks, and xbzrle.
QEMU version 2.5 defines x-postcopy-ram and 2.6 renames this to postcopy-ram. If x-postcopy-ram
or postcopy-ram are enabled, Ganeti will automatically move a migration to postcopy mode after a
dirty_sync_count of 2. Other than normal live migration, that can recover from dying destination
node, it is not possible to recover from dying source node during active postcopy migration.
Please note that while a combination of xbzrle and auto-converge might speed up the migration
process significantly, the first may cause BSOD on Windows8r2 instances running on drbd.
kvm_path
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Path to the userspace KVM (or qemu) program.
vhost_net
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This boolean option determines whether the tap devices used by the KVM paravirtual nics (virtio-
net) will use accelerated data plane, passing network packets directly between host and guest ker‐
nel, without going through userspace emulation layer (qemu).
Historically it is set to false by default. New Clusters created with Ganeti-3.1 and newer de‐
faults to true. Everyone is encouraged to enable it.
vnet_hdr
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
This boolean option determines whether the tap devices used by the KVM paravirtual nics (virtio-
net) will get created with VNET_HDR (IFF_VNET_HDR) support.
If set to false, it effectively disables offloading on the virio-net interfaces, which prevents
host kernel tainting and log flooding, when dealing with broken or malicious virtio-net drivers.
It is set to true by default.
virtio_net_queues
Valid for the KVM hypervisor.
Set a number of queues (file descriptors) for tap device to parallelize packets sending or receiv‐
ing. Tap devices will be created with MULTI_QUEUE (IFF_MULTI_QUEUE) support. This only works
with KVM paravirtual nics (virtio-net) and the maximum number of queues is limited to 8. Techni‐
cally this is an extension of vnet_hdr which must be enabled for multiqueue support.
If set to 1 queue, it effectively disables multiqueue support on the tap and virio-net devices.
For instances it is necessary to manually set number of queues (on Linux using: ethtool -L ethX
combined $queues).
It is set to 1 by default.
startup_timeout
Valid for the LXC hypervisor.
This integer option specifies the number of seconds to wait for the state of an LXC container
changes to "RUNNING" after startup, as reported by lxc-wait. Otherwise we assume an error has oc‐
curred and report it.
It is set to 30 by default.
extra_cgroups
Valid for the LXC hypervisor.
This option specifies the list of cgroup subsystems that will be mounted alongside the needed ones
before starting LXC containers.
Since LXC version >= 1.0.0, LXC strictly requires all cgroup subsystems to be mounted before
starting a container. Users can control the list of desired cgroup subsystems for LXC containers
by specifying the lxc.cgroup.use parameter in the LXC system configuration file(see: lxc.sys‐
tem.conf(5)). Its default value is "@kernel" which means all cgroup kernel subsystems.
The LXC hypervisor of Ganeti ensures that all cgroup subsystems needed to start an LXC container
are mounted, as well as the subsystems specified in this parameter. The needed subsystems are
currently cpuset, memory, devices, and cpuacct.
The value of this parameter should be a list of cgroup subsystems separated by a comma(e.g.,
"net_cls,perf_event,blkio").
If this parameter is not specified, a list of subsystems will be taken from /proc/cgroups instead.
drop_capabilities
Valid for the LXC hypervisor.
This option specifies the list of capabilities which should be dropped for a LXC container. Each
value of this option must be in the same form as the lxc.cap.drop configuration parameter of
lxc.container.conf(5). It is the lower case of the capability name without the "CAP_" prefix
(e.g., "sys_module,sys_time"). See capabilities(7) for more details about Linux capabilities.
Note that some capabilities are required by the LXC container (see: lxc.container.conf(5)). Also
note that the CAP_SYS_BOOT is required(should not be dropped) to perform the soft reboot for the
LXC container.
The default value is mac_override,sys_boot,sys_module,sys_time.
devices
Valid for the LXC hypervisor.
This option specifies the list of devices that can be accessed from inside of the LXC container.
Each value of this option must have the same form as the lxc.cgroup.devices.allow configuration
parameter of lxc.container.conf(5). It consists of the type(a: all, b: block, c: character), the
major-minor pair, and the access type sequence(r: read, w: write, m: mknod), e.g. "c 1:3 rw". If
you'd like to allow the LXC container to access /dev/null and /dev/zero with read-write access,
you can set this parameter to: "c 1:3 rw,c 1:5 rw". The LXC hypervisor drops all direct device
access by default, so if you want to allow the LXC container to access an additional device which
is not included in the default value of this parameter, you have to set this parameter manually.
By default, this parameter contains (/dev/null, /dev/zero, /dev/full, /dev/random, /dev/urandom,
/dev/aio, /dev/tty, /dev/console, /dev/ptmx and first block of Unix98 PTY slaves) with read-
write(rw) access.
extra_config
Valid for the LXC hypervisor.
This option specifies the list of extra config parameters which are not supported by the Ganeti
LXC hypervisor natively. Each value of this option must be a valid line of the LXC container con‐
fig file(see: lxc.container.conf(5)).
This parameter is not set by default.
num_ttys
Valid for the LXC hypervisor.
This option specifies the number of ttys(actually ptys) that should be allocated for the LXC con‐
tainer. You can disable pty devices allocation for the LXC container by setting this parameter to
0, but you can't use gnt-instance console in this case.
It is set to 6 by default.
The -O (--os-parameters) option allows customisation of the OS parameters. The actual parameter names
and values depend on the OS being used, but the syntax is the same key=value. For example, setting a hy‐
pothetical dhcp parameter to yes can be achieved by:
gnt-instance add -O dhcp=yes ...
You can also specify OS parameters that should not be logged but reused at the next reinstall with --os-
parameters-private and OS parameters that should not be logged or saved to configuration with --os-para‐
meters-secret. Bear in mind that:
• Launching the daemons in debug mode will cause debug logging to happen, which leaks private and
secret parameters to the log files. Do not use the debug mode in production. Daemons will emit
a warning on startup if they are in debug mode.
• You will have to pass again all --os-parameters-secret parameters should you want to reinstall
this instance.
The -I (--iallocator) option specifies the instance allocator plugin to use (. means the default alloca‐
tor). If you pass in this option the allocator will select nodes for this instance automatically, so you
don't need to pass them with the -n option. For more information please refer to the instance allocator
documentation.
The -g (--node-group) option can be used to create the instance in a particular node group, specified by
name.
The -t (--disk-template) options specifies the disk layout type for the instance. If no disk template is
specified, the default disk template is used. The default disk template is the first in the list of en‐
abled disk templates, which can be adjusted cluster-wide with gnt-cluster modify. The available choices
for disk templates are:
diskless
This creates an instance with no disks. Its useful for testing only (or other special cases).
file Disk devices will be regular files.
sharedfile
Disk devices will be regular files on a shared directory.
plain Disk devices will be logical volumes.
drbd Disk devices will be drbd (version 8.x) on top of lvm volumes.
rbd Disk devices will be rbd volumes residing inside a RADOS cluster.
blockdev
Disk devices will be adopted pre-existent block devices.
ext Disk devices will be provided by external shared storage, through the ExtStorage Interface using
ExtStorage providers.
The optional second value of the -n (--node) is used for the drbd template type and specifies the remote
node.
If you do not want gnt-instance to wait for the disk mirror to be synced, use the --no-wait-for-sync op‐
tion.
The --file-storage-dir specifies the relative path under the cluster-wide file storage directory to store
file-based disks. It is useful for having different subdirectories for different instances. The full
path of the directory where the disk files are stored will consist of cluster-wide file storage directory
+ optional subdirectory + instance name. This option is only relevant for instances using the file stor‐
age backend.
The --file-driver specifies the driver to use for file-based disks. Note that currently these drivers
work with the xen hypervisor only. This option is only relevant for instances using the file storage
backend. The available choices are:
loop Kernel loopback driver. This driver uses loopback devices to access the filesystem within the
file. However, running I/O intensive applications in your instance using the loop driver might
result in slowdowns. Furthermore, if you use the loopback driver consider increasing the maximum
amount of loopback devices (on most systems it's 8) using the max_loop param.
blktap The blktap driver (for Xen hypervisors). In order to be able to use the blktap driver you should
check if the 'blktapctrl' user space disk agent is running (usually automatically started via
xend). This user-level disk I/O interface has the advantage of better performance. Especially if
you use a network file system (e.g. NFS) to store your instances this is the recommended choice.
blktap2
Analogous to the blktap driver, but used by newer versions of Xen.
If --ignore-ipolicy is given any instance policy violations occurring during this operation are ignored.
The -c and --communication specify whether to enable/disable instance communication, which is a communi‐
cation mechanism between the instance and the host.
The --tags allows tags to be applied to the instance, typically to influence the allocator. Multiple
tags can be separated with commas.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance add -t file --disk 0:size=30g -B maxmem=512 -o debian-etch \
-n node1.example.com --file-storage-dir=mysubdir instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance add -t plain --disk 0:size=30g -B maxmem=1024,minmem=512 \
-o debian-etch -n node1.example.com instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance add -t plain --disk 0:size=30g --disk 1:size=100g,vg=san \
-B maxmem=512 -o debian-etch -n node1.example.com instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance add -t drbd --disk 0:size=30g -B maxmem=512 -o debian-etch \
-n node1.example.com:node2.example.com instance2.example.com
# gnt-instance add -t rbd --disk 0:size=30g -B maxmem=512 -o debian-etch \
-n node1.example.com instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance add -t ext --disk 0:size=30g,provider=pvdr1 -B maxmem=512 \
-o debian-etch -n node1.example.com instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance add -t ext --disk 0:size=30g,provider=pvdr1,param1=val1 \
--disk 1:size=40g,provider=pvdr2,param2=val2,param3=val3 -B maxmem=512 \
-o debian-etch -n node1.example.com instance1.example.com
BATCH-CREATE
batch-create
[{-I|--iallocator} instance allocator]
{instances_file.json}
This command (similar to the Ganeti 1.2 batcher tool) submits multiple instance creation jobs based on a
definition file. This file can contain all options which are valid when adding an instance with the ex‐
ception of the iallocator field. The IAllocator is, for optimization purposes, only allowed to be set
for the whole batch operation using the --iallocator parameter.
The instance file must be a valid-formed JSON file, containing an array of dictionaries with instance
creation parameters. All parameters (except iallocator) which are valid for the instance creation OP
code are allowed. The most important ones are:
instance_name
The FQDN of the new instance.
disk_template
The disk template to use for the instance, the same as in the add command.
disks Array of disk specifications. Each entry describes one disk as a dictionary of disk parameters.
beparams
A dictionary of backend parameters.
hypervisor
The hypervisor for the instance.
hvparams
A dictionary with the hypervisor options. If not passed, the default hypervisor options will be
inherited.
nics List of NICs that will be created for the instance. Each entry should be a dict, with mac, ip,
mode and link as possible keys. Please don't provide the "mac, ip, mode, link" parent keys if you
use this method for specifying NICs.
pnode, snode
The primary and optionally the secondary node to use for the instance (in case an iallocator
script is not used). If those parameters are given, they have to be given consistently for all
instances in the batch operation.
start whether to start the instance
ip_check
Skip the check for already-in-use instance; see the description in the add command for details.
name_check
Skip the name check for instances; see the description in the add command for details.
file_storage_dir, file_driver
Configuration for the file disk type, see the add command for details.
A simple definition for one instance can be (with most of the parameters taken from the cluster de‐
faults):
[
{
"mode": "create",
"instance_name": "instance1.example.com",
"disk_template": "drbd",
"os_type": "debootstrap",
"disks": [{"size":"1024"}],
"nics": [{}],
"hypervisor": "xen-pvm"
},
{
"mode": "create",
"instance_name": "instance2.example.com",
"disk_template": "drbd",
"os_type": "debootstrap",
"disks": [{"size":"4096", "mode": "rw", "vg": "xenvg"}],
"nics": [{}],
"hypervisor": "xen-hvm",
"hvparams": {"acpi": true},
"beparams": {"maxmem": 512, "minmem": 256}
}
]
The command will display the job id for each submitted instance, as follows:
# gnt-instance batch-create instances.json
Submitted jobs 37, 38
Note: If the allocator is used for computing suitable nodes for the instances, it will only take into ac‐
count disk information for the default disk template. That means, even if other disk templates are spec‐
ified for the instances, storage space information of these disk templates will not be considered in the
allocation computation.
REMOVE
remove [--ignore-failures] [--shutdown-timeout=*N*] [--submit]
[--print-jobid] [--force] {instance-name}
Remove an instance. This will remove all data from the instance and there is no way back. If you are
not sure if you use an instance again, use shutdown first and leave it in the shutdown state for a while.
The --ignore-failures option will cause the removal to proceed even in the presence of errors during the
removal of the instance (e.g. during the shutdown or the disk removal). If this option is not given,
the command will stop at the first error.
The --shutdown-timeout is used to specify how much time (in minutes) to wait before forcing the shutdown
(e.g. xm destroy in Xen, killing the kvm process for KVM, etc.). By default two minutes are given to
each instance to stop.
The --force option is used to skip the interactive confirmation.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance remove instance1.example.com
LIST
list
[--no-headers] [--separator=*SEPARATOR*] [--units=*UNITS*] [-v]
[{-o|--output} [+]FIELD,...] [--filter] [instance-name...]
Shows the currently configured instances with memory usage, disk usage, the node they are running on, and
their run status.
The --no-headers option will skip the initial header line. The --separator option takes an argument
which denotes what will be used between the output fields. Both these options are to help scripting.
The units used to display the numeric values in the output varies, depending on the options given. By
default, the values will be formatted in the most appropriate unit. If the --separator option is given,
then the values are shown in mebibytes to allow parsing by scripts. In both cases, the --units option
can be used to enforce a given output unit.
The -v option activates verbose mode, which changes the display of special field states (see ganeti(7)).
The -o (--output) option takes a comma-separated list of output fields. The available fields and their
meaning are:
admin_state
Desired state of the instance
admin_state_source
Who last changed the desired state of the instance
admin_up
Desired state of the instance
be/always_failover
The "always_failover" backend parameter
be/auto_balance
The "auto_balance" backend parameter
be/maxmem
The "maxmem" backend parameter
be/memory
The "maxmem" backend parameter
be/minmem
The "minmem" backend parameter
be/spindle_use
The "spindle_use" backend parameter
be/vcpus
The "vcpus" backend parameter
beparams
Backend parameters (merged)
bridge Bridge of 1st network interface
console
Instance console information
ctime Creation timestamp
custom_beparams
Custom backend parameters
custom_hvparams
Custom hypervisor parameters
custom_nicparams
Custom network interface parameters
custom_osparams
Custom operating system parameters
disk.count
Number of disks
disk.name/0
Name of 1st disk
disk.name/1
Name of 2nd disk
disk.name/2
Name of 3rd disk
disk.name/3
Name of 4th disk
disk.name/4
Name of 5th disk
disk.name/5
Name of 6th disk
disk.name/6
Name of 7th disk
disk.name/7
Name of 8th disk
disk.name/8
Name of 9th disk
disk.name/9
Name of 10th disk
disk.name/10
Name of 11th disk
disk.name/11
Name of 12th disk
disk.name/12
Name of 13th disk
disk.name/13
Name of 14th disk
disk.name/14
Name of 15th disk
disk.name/15
Name of 16th disk
disk.names
List of disk names
disk.size/0
Disk size of 1st disk
disk.size/1
Disk size of 2nd disk
disk.size/2
Disk size of 3rd disk
disk.size/3
Disk size of 4th disk
disk.size/4
Disk size of 5th disk
disk.size/5
Disk size of 6th disk
disk.size/6
Disk size of 7th disk
disk.size/7
Disk size of 8th disk
disk.size/8
Disk size of 9th disk
disk.size/9
Disk size of 10th disk
disk.size/10
Disk size of 11th disk
disk.size/11
Disk size of 12th disk
disk.size/12
Disk size of 13th disk
disk.size/13
Disk size of 14th disk
disk.size/14
Disk size of 15th disk
disk.size/15
Disk size of 16th disk
disk.sizes
List of disk sizes
disk.spindles
List of disk spindles
disk.spindles/0
Spindles of 1st disk
disk.spindles/1
Spindles of 2nd disk
disk.spindles/2
Spindles of 3rd disk
disk.spindles/3
Spindles of 4th disk
disk.spindles/4
Spindles of 5th disk
disk.spindles/5
Spindles of 6th disk
disk.spindles/6
Spindles of 7th disk
disk.spindles/7
Spindles of 8th disk
disk.spindles/8
Spindles of 9th disk
disk.spindles/9
Spindles of 10th disk
disk.spindles/10
Spindles of 11th disk
disk.spindles/11
Spindles of 12th disk
disk.spindles/12
Spindles of 13th disk
disk.spindles/13
Spindles of 14th disk
disk.spindles/14
Spindles of 15th disk
disk.spindles/15
Spindles of 16th disk
disk.uuid/0
UUID of 1st disk
disk.uuid/1
UUID of 2nd disk
disk.uuid/2
UUID of 3rd disk
disk.uuid/3
UUID of 4th disk
disk.uuid/4
UUID of 5th disk
disk.uuid/5
UUID of 6th disk
disk.uuid/6
UUID of 7th disk
disk.uuid/7
UUID of 8th disk
disk.uuid/8
UUID of 9th disk
disk.uuid/9
UUID of 10th disk
disk.uuid/10
UUID of 11th disk
disk.uuid/11
UUID of 12th disk
disk.uuid/12
UUID of 13th disk
disk.uuid/13
UUID of 14th disk
disk.uuid/14
UUID of 15th disk
disk.uuid/15
UUID of 16th disk
disk.uuids
List of disk UUIDs
disk_template
Instance disk template
disk_usage
Total disk space used by instance on each of its nodes; this is not the disk size visible to the
instance, but the usage on the node
disks_active
Desired state of the instance disks
forthcoming
Whether the Instance is forthcoming
hv/acpi
The "acpi" hypervisor parameter
hv/blockdev_prefix
The "blockdev_prefix" hypervisor parameter
hv/boot_order
The "boot_order" hypervisor parameter
hv/bootloader_args
The "bootloader_args" hypervisor parameter
hv/bootloader_path
The "bootloader_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/cdrom2_image_path
The "cdrom2_image_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/cdrom_disk_type
The "cdrom_disk_type" hypervisor parameter
hv/cdrom_image_path
The "cdrom_image_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_cap
The "cpu_cap" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_cores
The "cpu_cores" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_mask
The "cpu_mask" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_sockets
The "cpu_sockets" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_threads
The "cpu_threads" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_type
The "cpu_type" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpu_weight
The "cpu_weight" hypervisor parameter
hv/cpuid
The "cpuid" hypervisor parameter
hv/device_model
The "device_model" hypervisor parameter
hv/devices
The "devices" hypervisor parameter
hv/disk_aio
The "disk_aio" hypervisor parameter
hv/disk_cache
The "disk_cache" hypervisor parameter
hv/disk_discard
The "disk_discard" hypervisor parameter
hv/disk_type
The "disk_type" hypervisor parameter
hv/drop_capabilities
The "drop_capabilities" hypervisor parameter
hv/extra_cgroups
The "extra_cgroups" hypervisor parameter
hv/extra_config
The "extra_config" hypervisor parameter
hv/floppy_image_path
The "floppy_image_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/init_script
The "init_script" hypervisor parameter
hv/initrd_path
The "initrd_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/kernel_args
The "kernel_args" hypervisor parameter
hv/kernel_path
The "kernel_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/keymap
The "keymap" hypervisor parameter
hv/kvm_extra
The "kvm_extra" hypervisor parameter
hv/kvm_flag
The "kvm_flag" hypervisor parameter
hv/kvm_path
The "kvm_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/kvm_pci_reservations
The "kvm_pci_reservations" hypervisor parameter
hv/machine_version
The "machine_version" hypervisor parameter
hv/mem_path
The "mem_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/migration_caps
The "migration_caps" hypervisor parameter
hv/migration_downtime
The "migration_downtime" hypervisor parameter
hv/nic_type
The "nic_type" hypervisor parameter
hv/num_ttys
The "num_ttys" hypervisor parameter
hv/pae The "pae" hypervisor parameter
hv/pci_pass
The "pci_pass" hypervisor parameter
hv/reboot_behavior
The "reboot_behavior" hypervisor parameter
hv/root_path
The "root_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/scsi_controller_type
The "scsi_controller_type" hypervisor parameter
hv/security_domain
The "security_domain" hypervisor parameter
hv/security_model
The "security_model" hypervisor parameter
hv/serial_console
The "serial_console" hypervisor parameter
hv/serial_speed
The "serial_speed" hypervisor parameter
hv/soundhw
The "soundhw" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_bind
The "spice_bind" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_image_compression
The "spice_image_compression" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_ip_version
The "spice_ip_version" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_jpeg_wan_compression
The "spice_jpeg_wan_compression" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_password_file
The "spice_password_file" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_playback_compression
The "spice_playback_compression" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_streaming_video
The "spice_streaming_video" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_tls_ciphers
The "spice_tls_ciphers" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_use_tls
The "spice_use_tls" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_use_vdagent
The "spice_use_vdagent" hypervisor parameter
hv/spice_zlib_glz_wan_compression
The "spice_zlib_glz_wan_compression" hypervisor parameter
hv/startup_timeout
The "startup_timeout" hypervisor parameter
hv/usb_devices
The "usb_devices" hypervisor parameter
hv/usb_mouse
The "usb_mouse" hypervisor parameter
hv/use_bootloader
The "use_bootloader" hypervisor parameter
hv/use_chroot
The "use_chroot" hypervisor parameter
hv/use_guest_agent
The "use_guest_agent" hypervisor parameter
hv/use_localtime
The "use_localtime" hypervisor parameter
hv/user_shutdown
The "user_shutdown" hypervisor parameter
hv/vga The "vga" hypervisor parameter
hv/vhost_net
The "vhost_net" hypervisor parameter
hv/vif_script
The "vif_script" hypervisor parameter
hv/vif_type
The "vif_type" hypervisor parameter
hv/viridian
The "viridian" hypervisor parameter
hv/virtio_net_queues
The "virtio_net_queues" hypervisor parameter
hv/vnc_bind_address
The "vnc_bind_address" hypervisor parameter
hv/vnc_password_file
The "vnc_password_file" hypervisor parameter
hv/vnc_tls
The "vnc_tls" hypervisor parameter
hv/vnc_x509_path
The "vnc_x509_path" hypervisor parameter
hv/vnc_x509_verify
The "vnc_x509_verify" hypervisor parameter
hv/vnet_hdr
The "vnet_hdr" hypervisor parameter
hvparams
Hypervisor parameters (merged)
hypervisor
Hypervisor name
ip IP address of 1st network interface
mac MAC address of 1st network interface
mtime Modification timestamp
name Instance name
network_port
Instance network port if available (e.g. for VNC console)
nic.bridge/0
Bridge of 1st network interface
nic.bridge/1
Bridge of 2nd network interface
nic.bridge/2
Bridge of 3rd network interface
nic.bridge/3
Bridge of 4th network interface
nic.bridge/4
Bridge of 5th network interface
nic.bridge/5
Bridge of 6th network interface
nic.bridge/6
Bridge of 7th network interface
nic.bridge/7
Bridge of 8th network interface
nic.bridges
List containing each network interface's bridge
nic.count
Number of network interfaces
nic.ip/0
IP address of 1st network interface
nic.ip/1
IP address of 2nd network interface
nic.ip/2
IP address of 3rd network interface
nic.ip/3
IP address of 4th network interface
nic.ip/4
IP address of 5th network interface
nic.ip/5
IP address of 6th network interface
nic.ip/6
IP address of 7th network interface
nic.ip/7
IP address of 8th network interface
nic.ips
List containing each network interface's IP address
nic.link/0
Link of 1st network interface
nic.link/1
Link of 2nd network interface
nic.link/2
Link of 3rd network interface
nic.link/3
Link of 4th network interface
nic.link/4
Link of 5th network interface
nic.link/5
Link of 6th network interface
nic.link/6
Link of 7th network interface
nic.link/7
Link of 8th network interface
nic.links
List containing each network interface's link
nic.mac/0
MAC address of 1st network interface
nic.mac/1
MAC address of 2nd network interface
nic.mac/2
MAC address of 3rd network interface
nic.mac/3
MAC address of 4th network interface
nic.mac/4
MAC address of 5th network interface
nic.mac/5
MAC address of 6th network interface
nic.mac/6
MAC address of 7th network interface
nic.mac/7
MAC address of 8th network interface
nic.macs
List containing each network interface's MAC address
nic.mode/0
Mode of 1st network interface
nic.mode/1
Mode of 2nd network interface
nic.mode/2
Mode of 3rd network interface
nic.mode/3
Mode of 4th network interface
nic.mode/4
Mode of 5th network interface
nic.mode/5
Mode of 6th network interface
nic.mode/6
Mode of 7th network interface
nic.mode/7
Mode of 8th network interface
nic.modes
List containing each network interface's mode
nic.name/0
Name address of 1st network interface
nic.name/1
Name address of 2nd network interface
nic.name/2
Name address of 3rd network interface
nic.name/3
Name address of 4th network interface
nic.name/4
Name address of 5th network interface
nic.name/5
Name address of 6th network interface
nic.name/6
Name address of 7th network interface
nic.name/7
Name address of 8th network interface
nic.names
List containing each network interface's name
nic.network.name/0
Network name of 1st network interface
nic.network.name/1
Network name of 2nd network interface
nic.network.name/2
Network name of 3rd network interface
nic.network.name/3
Network name of 4th network interface
nic.network.name/4
Network name of 5th network interface
nic.network.name/5
Network name of 6th network interface
nic.network.name/6
Network name of 7th network interface
nic.network.name/7
Network name of 8th network interface
nic.network/0
Network of 1st network interface
nic.network/1
Network of 2nd network interface
nic.network/2
Network of 3rd network interface
nic.network/3
Network of 4th network interface
nic.network/4
Network of 5th network interface
nic.network/5
Network of 6th network interface
nic.network/6
Network of 7th network interface
nic.network/7
Network of 8th network interface
nic.networks
List containing each interface's network
nic.networks.names
List containing each interface's network
nic.uuid/0
UUID address of 1st network interface
nic.uuid/1
UUID address of 2nd network interface
nic.uuid/2
UUID address of 3rd network interface
nic.uuid/3
UUID address of 4th network interface
nic.uuid/4
UUID address of 5th network interface
nic.uuid/5
UUID address of 6th network interface
nic.uuid/6
UUID address of 7th network interface
nic.uuid/7
UUID address of 8th network interface
nic.uuids
List containing each network interface's UUID
nic.vlan/0
VLAN of 1st network interface
nic.vlan/1
VLAN of 2nd network interface
nic.vlan/2
VLAN of 3rd network interface
nic.vlan/3
VLAN of 4th network interface
nic.vlan/4
VLAN of 5th network interface
nic.vlan/5
VLAN of 6th network interface
nic.vlan/6
VLAN of 7th network interface
nic.vlan/7
VLAN of 8th network interface
nic.vlans
List containing each network interface's VLAN
nic_link
Link of 1st network interface
nic_mode
Mode of 1st network interface
nic_network
Network of 1st network interface
oper_ram
Actual memory usage as seen by hypervisor
oper_state
Actual state of instance
oper_vcpus
Actual number of VCPUs as seen by hypervisor
os Operating system
osparams
Operating system parameters (merged)
pnode Primary node
pnode.group
Primary node's group
pnode.group.uuid
Primary node's group UUID
sda_size
Disk size of 1st disk
sdb_size
Disk size of 2nd disk
serial_no
Instance object serial number, incremented on each modification
snodes Secondary nodes; usually this will just be one node
snodes.group
Node groups of secondary nodes
snodes.group.uuid
Node group UUIDs of secondary nodes
status Instance status; "running" if instance is set to be running and actually is, "ADMIN_down" if in‐
stance is stopped and is not running, "ERROR_wrongnode" if instance running, but not on its desig‐
nated primary node, "ERROR_up" if instance should be stopped, but is actually running, "ER‐
ROR_down" if instance should run, but doesn't, "ERROR_nodedown" if instance's primary node is
down, "ERROR_nodeoffline" if instance's primary node is marked offline, "ADMIN_offline" if in‐
stance is offline and does not use dynamic, "USER_down" if the user shutdown the instance re‐
sources
tags Tags
uuid Instance UUID
vcpus The "vcpus" backend parameter
If the value of the option starts with the character +, the new field(s) will be added to the default
list. This allows one to quickly see the default list plus a few other fields, instead of retyping the
entire list of fields.
There is a subtle grouping about the available output fields: all fields except for oper_state, oper_ram,
oper_vcpus and status are configuration value and not run-time values. So if you don't select any of the
these fields, the query will be satisfied instantly from the cluster configuration, without having to ask
the remote nodes for the data. This can be helpful for big clusters when you only want some data and it
makes sense to specify a reduced set of output fields.
If exactly one argument is given and it appears to be a query filter (see ganeti(7)), the query result is
filtered accordingly. For ambiguous cases (e.g. a single field name as a filter) the --filter (-F) op‐
tion forces the argument to be treated as a filter (e.g. gnt-instance list -F admin_state).
The default output field list is: name, os, pnode, admin_state, oper_state, oper_ram.
LIST-FIELDS
list-fields [field...]
Lists available fields for instances.
INFO
info [-s | --static] [--roman] {--all | instance-name}
Show detailed information about the given instance(s). This is different from list as it shows detailed
data about the instance's disks (especially useful for the drbd disk template).
If the option -s is used, only information available in the configuration file is returned, without
querying nodes, making the operation faster.
Use the --all to get info about all instances, rather than explicitly passing the ones you're interested
in.
The --roman option can be used to cause envy among people who like ancient cultures, but are stuck with
non-latin-friendly cluster virtualization technologies.
MODIFY
modify
[{-H|--hypervisor-parameters} HYPERVISOR_PARAMETERS]
[{-B|--backend-parameters} BACKEND_PARAMETERS]
[{-m|--runtime-memory} SIZE]
[--net add[:options...] |
--net [N:]add[,options...] |
--net [ID:]remove |
--net ID:modify[,options...]]
[--disk add:size=*SIZE*[,options...] |
--disk N:add,size=*SIZE*[,options...] |
--disk N:add,size=*SIZE*,provider=*PROVIDER*[,options...][,param=*value*... ] |
--disk N:attach,{name=*NAME* | uuid=*UUID*}|
--disk ID:modify[,options...]
--disk [ID:]remove]
--disk [ID:]detach]
[{-t rbd } |
{-t|--disk-template} drbd -n new_secondary] [--no-wait-for-sync] |
{-t--ext-params} {provider=*PROVIDER*}[,param=*value*... ] |
{-t sharedfile | gluster }
| [--file-storage-dir dir_path] [--file-driver {loop | blktap | blktap2}]
[--new-primary=*node*]
[--os-type=*OS* [--force-variant]]
[{-O|--os-parameters} param=*value*... ]
[--os-parameters-private param=*value*... ]
[--offline | --online]
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
[--ignore-ipolicy]
[--hotplug]
[--hotplug-if-possible]
{instance-name}
Modifies the memory size, number of vcpus, ip address, MAC address and/or NIC parameters for an instance.
It can also add and remove disks and NICs to/from the instance. Note that you need to give at least one
of the arguments, otherwise the command complains.
The -H (--hypervisor-parameters), -B (--backend-parameters) and -O (--os-parameters) options specifies
hypervisor, backend and OS parameter options in the form of name=value[,...]. For details which options
can be specified, see the add command.
The -t (--disk-template) option will change the disk template of the instance. Currently, conversions
between all the available templates are supported, except the diskless and the blockdev templates. For
the blockdev disk template, only partial support is provided and acts only as a source template. Since
these volumes are adopted pre-existent block devices, conversions targeting this template are not sup‐
ported. Also, there is no support for conversions to or from the diskless template. The instance must
be stopped before attempting the conversion. When changing from the plain to the drbd disk template, a
new secondary node must be specified via the -n option. The option --no-wait-for-sync can be used when
converting to the drbd template in order to make the instance available for startup before DRBD has fin‐
ished resyncing. When changing to a file-based disk template, i.e., file, sharedfile and gluster, the
file storage directory and the file driver can be specified via the --file-storage-dir and --file-driver
options, respectively. For more details on these options please refer to the add command section. When
changing to an ext template, the provider's name must be specified. Also, arbitrary parameters can be
passed, as additional comma separated options. Those parameters along with the ExtStorage provider must
be passed using either the --ext-params or -e option. It is not allowed specifying existing disk parame‐
ters such as the size, mode, name, access, adopt, vg, metavg, provider, or spindles options.
The -m (--runtime-memory) option will change an instance's runtime memory to the given size (in MB if a
different suffix is not specified), by ballooning it up or down to the new value.
The --disk add:size=*SIZE*,[options..] option adds a disk to the instance, and --disk
*N*:add,size=*SIZE*,[options..] will add a disk to the instance at a specific index. The available op‐
tions are the same as in the add command (spindles, mode, name, vg, metavg and access). By default, gnt-
instance waits for the disk mirror to sync. If you do not want this behavior, use the --no-wait-for-sync
option. When adding an ExtStorage disk, the provider=*PROVIDER* option is also mandatory and specifies
the ExtStorage provider. Also, for ExtStorage disks arbitrary parameters can be passed as additional
comma separated options, same as in the add command. The --disk attach:name=*NAME* option attaches an
existing disk to the instance at the last disk index and --disk *N*:attach,name=*NAME* will attach a disk
to the instance at a specific index. The accepted disk identifiers are its name or uuid. The --disk re‐
move option will remove the last disk of the instance. Use --disk ID:remove to remove a disk by its
identifier. ID can be the index of the disk, the disks's name or the disks's UUID. The above apply also
to the --disk detach option, which removes a disk from an instance but keeps it in the configuration and
doesn't destroy it. The --disk *ID*:modify[,options...] will change the options of the disk. Available
options are:
mode The access mode. Either ro (read-only) or the default rw (read-write).
name This option specifies a name for the disk, which can be used as a disk identifier. An instance
can not have two disks with the same name.
The --net *N*:add[,options..] will add a new network interface to the instance. The available options
are the same as in the add command (mac, ip, link, mode, network). The --net *ID*,remove will remove the
instances' NIC with ID identifier, which can be the index of the NIC, the NIC's name or the NIC's UUID.
The --net *ID*:modify[,options..] option will change the parameters of the instance network interface
with the ID identifier.
The option -o (--os-type) will change the OS name for the instance (without reinstallation). In case an
OS variant is specified that is not found, then by default the modification is refused, unless --force-
variant is passed. An invalid OS will also be refused, unless the --force option is given.
The option --new-primary will set the new primary node of an instance assuming the disks have already
been moved manually. Unless the --force option is given, it is verified that the instance is no longer
running on its current primary node.
The --online and --offline options are used to transition an instance into and out of the offline state.
An instance can be turned offline only if it was previously down. The --online option fails if the in‐
stance was not in the offline state, otherwise it changes instance's state to down. These modifications
take effect immediately.
If --ignore-ipolicy is given any instance policy violations occurring during this operation are ignored.
If --hotplug is given any disk and NIC modifications will take effect without the need of actual reboot.
Please note that this feature is currently supported only for KVM hypervisor and there are some restric‐
tions: a) NIC/Disk hot-remove should work for QEMU versions >= 1.0 b) instances with chroot or pool/user
security model support disk hot-add only for QEMU version > 1.7 where add-fd QMP command exists c) if
hotplug fails (for any reason) a warning is printed but execution is continued d) for existing NIC modi‐
fication interactive verification is needed unless --force option is passed.
If --hotplug-if-possible is given then ganeti won't abort in case hotplug is not supported. It will con‐
tinue execution and modification will take place after reboot. This covers use cases where instances are
not running or hypervisor is not KVM.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Most of the changes take effect at the next restart. If the instance is running, there is no effect on
the instance.
REINSTALL
reinstall [{-o|--os-type} os-type] [--select-os] [-f force]
[--force-multiple]
[--instance | --node | --primary | --secondary | --all]
[{-O|--os-parameters} OS_PARAMETERS]
[--os-parameters-private} OS_PARAMETERS]
[--os-parameters-secret} OS_PARAMETERS]
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
{instance...}
Reinstalls the operating system on the given instance(s). The instance(s) must be stopped when running
this command. If the -o (--os-type) is specified, the operating system is changed.
The --select-os option switches to an interactive OS reinstall. The user is prompted to select the OS
template from the list of available OS templates. OS parameters can be overridden using -O (--os-parame‐
ters) (more documentation for this option under the add command).
Since this is a potentially dangerous command, the user will be required to confirm this action, unless
the -f flag is passed. When multiple instances are selected (either by passing multiple arguments or by
using the --node, --primary, --secondary or --all options), the user must pass the --force-multiple op‐
tions to skip the interactive confirmation.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
RENAME
rename [--no-ip-check] [--no-name-check] [--force]
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
{instance} {new_name}
Renames the given instance. The instance must be stopped when running this command. The requirements
for the new name are the same as for adding an instance: the new name must be resolvable and the IP it
resolves to must not be reachable (in order to prevent duplicate IPs the next time the instance is start‐
ed). The IP test can be skipped if the --no-ip-check option is passed.
Note that you can rename an instance to its same name, to force re-executing the os-specific rename
script for that instance, if needed.
The --no-name-check skips the check for the new instance name via the resolver (e.g. in DNS or
/etc/hosts, depending on your setup) and that the resolved name matches the provided name. Since the
name check is used to compute the IP address, if you pass this option you must also pass the --no-ip-
check option.
The --force option is used to skip the interactive confirmation when --no-name-check is passed.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Starting/stopping/connecting to console
STARTUP
startup
[--force] [--ignore-offline]
[--force-multiple] [--no-remember]
[--instance | --node | --primary | --secondary | --all |
--tags | --node-tags | --pri-node-tags | --sec-node-tags]
[{-H|--hypervisor-parameters} key=value...]
[{-B|--backend-parameters} key=value...]
[--submit] [--print-jobid] [--paused]
{instance...}
Starts one or more instances, depending on the following options. The four available modes are:
--instance
will start the instances given as arguments (at least one argument required); this is the default
selection
--node will start the instances who have the given node as either primary or secondary
--primary
will start all instances whose primary node is in the list of nodes passed as arguments (at least
one node required)
--secondary
will start all instances whose secondary node is in the list of nodes passed as arguments (at
least one node required)
--all will start all instances in the cluster (no arguments accepted)
--tags will start all instances in the cluster with the tags given as arguments
--node-tags
will start all instances in the cluster on nodes with the tags given as arguments
--pri-node-tags
will start all instances in the cluster on primary nodes with the tags given as arguments
--sec-node-tags
will start all instances in the cluster on secondary nodes with the tags given as arguments
Note that although you can pass more than one selection option, the last one wins, so in order to guaran‐
tee the desired result, don't pass more than one such option.
Use --force to start even if secondary disks are failing. --ignore-offline can be used to ignore offline
primary nodes and mark the instance as started even if the primary is not available.
The --force-multiple will skip the interactive confirmation in the case the more than one instance will
be affected.
The --no-remember option will perform the startup but not change the state of the instance in the config‐
uration file (if it was stopped before, Ganeti will still think it needs to be stopped). This can be
used for testing, or for a one shot-start where you don't want the watcher to restart the instance if it
crashes.
The -H (--hypervisor-parameters) and -B (--backend-parameters) options specify temporary hypervisor and
backend parameters that can be used to start an instance with modified parameters. They can be useful
for quick testing without having to modify an instance back and forth, e.g.:
# gnt-instance start -H kernel_args="single" instance1
# gnt-instance start -B maxmem=2048 instance2
The first form will start the instance instance1 in single-user mode, and the instance instance2 with 2GB
of RAM (this time only, unless that is the actual instance memory size already). Note that the values
override the instance parameters (and not extend them): an instance with "kernel_args=ro" when started
with -H kernel_args=single will result in "single", not "ro single".
The --paused option is only valid for Xen and kvm hypervisors. This pauses the instance at the start of
bootup, awaiting gnt-instance console to unpause it, allowing the entire boot process to be monitored for
debugging.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance start instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance start --node node1.example.com node2.example.com
# gnt-instance start --all
SHUTDOWN
shutdown
[--timeout=*N*]
[--force] [--force-multiple] [--ignore-offline] [--no-remember]
[--instance | --node | --primary | --secondary | --all |
--tags | --node-tags | --pri-node-tags | --sec-node-tags]
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
{instance...}
Stops one or more instances. If the instance cannot be cleanly stopped during a hardcoded interval (cur‐
rently 2 minutes), it will forcibly stop the instance (equivalent to switching off the power on a physi‐
cal machine).
The --timeout is used to specify how much time (in minutes) to wait before forcing the shutdown (e.g. xm
destroy in Xen, killing the kvm process for KVM, etc.). By default two minutes are given to each in‐
stance to stop.
The --instance, --node, --primary, --secondary, --all, --tags, --node-tags, --pri-node-tags and --sec-
node-tags options are similar as for the startup command and they influence the actual instances being
shutdown.
--ignore-offline can be used to ignore offline primary nodes and force the instance to be marked as
stopped. This option should be used with care as it can lead to an inconsistent cluster state.
Use --force to be able to shutdown an instance even when it's marked as offline. This is useful if an
offline instance ends up in the ERROR_up state, for example.
The --no-remember option will perform the shutdown but not change the state of the instance in the con‐
figuration file (if it was running before, Ganeti will still thinks it needs to be running). This can be
useful for a cluster-wide shutdown, where some instances are marked as up and some as down, and you don't
want to change the running state: you just need to disable the watcher, shutdown all instances with --no-
remember, and when the watcher is activated again it will restore the correct runtime state for all in‐
stances.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance shutdown instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance shutdown --all
REBOOT
reboot
[{-t|--type} REBOOT-TYPE]
[--ignore-secondaries]
[--shutdown-timeout=*N*]
[--force-multiple]
[--instance | --node | --primary | --secondary | --all |
--tags | --node-tags | --pri-node-tags | --sec-node-tags]
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
[instance...]
Reboots one or more instances. The type of reboot depends on the value of -t (--type). A soft reboot
does a hypervisor reboot, a hard reboot does a instance stop, recreates the hypervisor config for the in‐
stance and starts the instance. A full reboot does the equivalent of gnt-instance shutdown && gnt-in‐
stance startup. The default is hard reboot.
For the hard reboot the option --ignore-secondaries ignores errors for the secondary node while re-assem‐
bling the instance disks.
The --instance, --node, --primary, --secondary, --all, --tags, --node-tags, --pri-node-tags and --sec-
node-tags options are similar as for the startup command and they influence the actual instances being
rebooted.
The --shutdown-timeout is used to specify how much time (in minutes) to wait before forcing the shutdown
(xm destroy in xen, killing the kvm process, for kvm). By default two minutes are given to each instance
to stop.
The --force-multiple will skip the interactive confirmation in the case the more than one instance will
be affected.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance reboot instance1.example.com
# gnt-instance reboot --type=full instance1.example.com
CONSOLE
console [--show-cmd] {instance}
Connects to the console of the given instance. If the instance is not up, an error is returned. Use the
--show-cmd option to display the command instead of executing it.
For HVM instances, this will attempt to connect to the serial console of the instance. To connect to the
virtualized "physical" console of a HVM instance, use a VNC client with the connection info from the info
command.
For Xen/kvm instances, if the instance is paused, this attempts to unpause the instance after waiting a
few seconds for the connection to the console to be made.
Example:
# gnt-instance console instance1.example.com
Disk management
REPLACE-DISKS
replace-disks [--submit] [--print-jobid] [--early-release]
[--ignore-ipolicy] {-p} [--disks idx] {instance-name}
replace-disks [--submit] [--print-jobid] [--early-release]
[--ignore-ipolicy] {-s} [--disks idx] {instance-name}
replace-disks [--submit] [--print-jobid] [--early-release]
[--ignore-ipolicy]
{{-I|--iallocator} name | {{-n|--new-secondary} node }
{instance-name}
replace-disks [--submit] [--print-jobid] [--early-release]
[--ignore-ipolicy] {-a|--auto} {instance-name}
This command is a generalized form for replacing disks. It is currently only valid for the mirrored
(DRBD) disk template.
The first form (when passing the -p option) will replace the disks on the primary, while the second form
(when passing the -s option will replace the disks on the secondary node. For these two cases (as the
node doesn't change), it is possible to only run the replace for a subset of the disks, using the option
--disks which takes a list of comma-delimited disk indices (zero-based), e.g. 0,2 to replace only the
first and third disks.
The third form (when passing either the --iallocator or the --new-secondary option) is designed to change
secondary node of the instance. Specifying --iallocator makes the new secondary be selected automatical‐
ly by the specified allocator plugin (use . to indicate the default allocator), otherwise the new sec‐
ondary node will be the one chosen manually via the --new-secondary option.
Note that it is not possible to select an offline or drained node as a new secondary.
The fourth form (when using --auto) will automatically determine which disks of an instance are faulty
and replace them within the same node. The --auto option works only when an instance has only faulty
disks on either the primary or secondary node; it doesn't work when both sides have faulty disks.
The --early-release changes the code so that the old storage on secondary node(s) is removed early (be‐
fore the resync is completed) and the internal Ganeti locks for the current (and new, if any) secondary
node are also released, thus allowing more parallelism in the cluster operation. This should be used on‐
ly when recovering from a disk failure on the current secondary (thus the old storage is already broken)
or when the storage on the primary node is known to be fine (thus we won't need the old storage for po‐
tential recovery).
The --ignore-ipolicy let the command ignore instance policy violations if replace-disks changes groups
and the instance would violate the new groups instance policy.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
ACTIVATE-DISKS
activate-disks [--submit] [--print-jobid] [--ignore-size]
[--wait-for-sync] {instance-name}
Activates the block devices of the given instance. If successful, the command will show the location and
name of the block devices:
node1.example.com:disk/0:/dev/drbd0
node1.example.com:disk/1:/dev/drbd1
In this example, node1.example.com is the name of the node on which the devices have been activated. The
disk/0 and disk/1 are the Ganeti-names of the instance disks; how they are visible inside the instance is
hypervisor-specific. /dev/drbd0 and /dev/drbd1 are the actual block devices as visible on the node.
The --ignore-size option can be used to activate disks ignoring the currently configured size in Ganeti.
This can be used in cases where the configuration has gotten out of sync with the real-world (e.g. after
a partially-failed grow-disk operation or due to rounding in LVM devices). This should not be used in
normal cases, but only when activate-disks fails without it.
The --wait-for-sync option will ensure that the command returns only after the instance's disks are syn‐
chronised (mostly for DRBD); this can be useful to ensure consistency, as otherwise there are no commands
that can wait until synchronisation is done. However when passing this option, the command will have ad‐
ditional output, making it harder to parse the disk information.
Note that it is safe to run this command while the instance is already running.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
DEACTIVATE-DISKS
deactivate-disks [-f] [--submit] [--print-jobid] {instance-name}
De-activates the block devices of the given instance. Note that if you run this command for an instance
with a drbd disk template, while it is running, it will not be able to shutdown the block devices on the
primary node, but it will shutdown the block devices on the secondary nodes, thus breaking the replica‐
tion.
The -f/--force option will skip checks that the instance is down; in case the hypervisor is confused and
we can't talk to it, normally Ganeti will refuse to deactivate the disks, but with this option passed it
will skip this check and directly try to deactivate the disks. This can still fail due to the instance
actually running or other issues.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
GROW-DISK
grow-disk [--no-wait-for-sync] [--submit] [--print-jobid]
[--absolute]
{instance-name} {disk} {amount}
Grows an instance's disk. This is only possible for instances having a plain, drbd, file, sharedfile,
rbd or ext disk template. For the ext template to work, the ExtStorage provider should also support
growing. This means having a grow script that actually grows the volume of the external shared storage.
Note that this command only change the block device size; it will not grow the actual filesystems, parti‐
tions, etc. that live on that disk. Usually, you will need to:
1. use gnt-instance grow-disk
2. reboot the instance (later, at a convenient time)
3. use a filesystem resizer, such as ext2online(8) or xfs_growfs(8) to resize the filesystem, or use
fdisk(8) to change the partition table on the disk
The disk argument is the index of the instance disk to grow. The amount argument is given as a number
which can have a suffix (like the disk size in instance create); if the suffix is missing, the value will
be interpreted as mebibytes.
By default, the amount value represents the desired increase in the disk size (e.g. an amount of 1G will
take a disk of size 3G to 4G). If the optional --absolute parameter is passed, then the amount argument
doesn't represent the delta, but instead the desired final disk size (e.g. an amount of 8G will take a
disk of size 4G to 8G).
For instances with a drbd template, note that the disk grow operation might complete on one node but fail
on the other; this will leave the instance with different-sized LVs on the two nodes, but this will not
create problems (except for unused space).
If you do not want gnt-instance to wait for the new disk region to be synced, use the --no-wait-for-sync
option.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example (increase the first disk for instance1 by 16GiB):
# gnt-instance grow-disk instance1.example.com 0 16g
Example for increasing the disk size to a certain size:
# gnt-instance grow-disk --absolute instance1.example.com 0 32g
Also note that disk shrinking is not supported; use gnt-backup export and then gnt-backup import to re‐
duce the disk size of an instance.
RECREATE-DISKS
recreate-disks [--submit] [--print-jobid]
[{-n node1:[node2] | {-I|--iallocator name}}]
[--disk=*N*[:[size=*VAL*][,spindles=*VAL*][,mode=*ro|rw*]]]
{instance-name}
Recreates all or a subset of disks of the given instance.
Note that this functionality should only be used for missing disks; if any of the given disks already ex‐
ists, the operation will fail. While this is suboptimal, recreate-disks should hopefully not be needed
in normal operation and as such the impact of this is low.
If only a subset should be recreated, any number of disk options can be specified. It expects a disk in‐
dex and an optional list of disk parameters to change. Only size, spindles, and mode can be changed
while recreating disks. To recreate all disks while changing parameters on a subset only, a --disk op‐
tion must be given for every disk of the instance.
Optionally the instance's disks can be recreated on different nodes. This can be useful if, for example,
the original nodes of the instance have gone down (and are marked offline), so we can't recreate on the
same nodes. To do this, pass the new node(s) via -n option, with a syntax similar to the add command.
The number of nodes passed must equal the number of nodes that the instance currently has. Note that
changing nodes is only allowed when all disks are replaced, e.g. when no --disk option is passed.
Another method of choosing which nodes to place the instance on is by using the specified iallocator,
passing the --iallocator option. The primary and secondary nodes will be chosen by the specified iallo‐
cator plugin, or by the default allocator if . is specified.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Recovery/moving
FAILOVER
failover [-f] [--ignore-consistency] [--ignore-ipolicy]
[--shutdown-timeout=*N*]
[{-n--iallocator} name]
[--cleanup]
[--submit] [--print-jobid]
{instance-name}
Failover will stop the instance (if running), change its primary node, and if it was originally running
it will start it again (on the new primary). This works for instances with drbd template (in which case
you can only fail to the secondary node) and for externally mirrored templates (sharedfile, blockdev, rbd
and ext) (in which case you can fail to any other node).
If the instance's disk template is of type sharedfile, blockdev, rbd or ext, then you can explicitly
specify the target node (which can be any node) using the -n or --target-node option, or specify an ial‐
locator plugin using the -I or --iallocator option. If you omit both, the default iallocator will be
used to specify the target node.
If the instance's disk template is of type drbd, the target node is automatically selected as the drbd's
secondary node. Changing the secondary node is possible with a replace-disks operation.
Normally the failover will check the consistency of the disks before failing over the instance. If you
are trying to migrate instances off a dead node, this will fail. Use the --ignore-consistency option for
this purpose. Note that this option can be dangerous as errors in shutting down the instance will be ig‐
nored, resulting in possibly having the instance running on two machines in parallel (on disconnected
DRBD drives). This flag requires the source node to be marked offline first to succeed.
The --shutdown-timeout is used to specify how much time (in minutes) to wait before forcing the shutdown
(xm destroy in xen, killing the kvm process, for kvm). By default two minutes are given to each instance
to stop.
If --ignore-ipolicy is given any instance policy violations occurring during this operation are ignored.
If the --cleanup option is passed, the operation changes from performing a failover to attempting recov‐
ery from a failed previous failover. In this mode, Ganeti checks if the instance runs on the correct
node (and updates its configuration if not) and ensures the instance's disks are configured correctly.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance failover instance1.example.com
For externally mirrored templates also -n is available:
# gnt-instance failover -n node3.example.com instance1.example.com
MIGRATE
migrate [-f] [--allow-failover] [--non-live]
[--migration-mode=live|non-live] [--ignore-ipolicy] [--ignore-hvversions]
[--no-runtime-changes] [--submit] [--print-jobid]
[{-n--iallocator} name] {instance-name}
migrate [-f] --cleanup [--submit] [--print-jobid] {instance-name}
Migrate will move the instance to its secondary node without shutdown. As with failover, it works for
instances having the drbd disk template or an externally mirrored disk template type such as sharedfile,
blockdev, rbd or ext.
If the instance's disk template is of type sharedfile, blockdev, rbd or ext, then you can explicitly
specify the target node (which can be any node) using the -n or --target-node option, or specify an ial‐
locator plugin using the -I or --iallocator option. If you omit both, the default iallocator will be
used to specify the target node. Alternatively, the default iallocator can be requested by specifying .
as the name of the plugin.
If the instance's disk template is of type drbd, the target node is automatically selected as the drbd's
secondary node. Changing the secondary node is possible with a replace-disks operation.
The migration command needs a perfectly healthy instance for drbd instances, as we rely on the dual-mas‐
ter capability of drbd8 and the disks of the instance are not allowed to be degraded.
The --non-live and --migration-mode=non-live options will switch (for the hypervisors that support it)
between a "fully live" (i.e. the interruption is as minimal as possible) migration and one in which the
instance is frozen, its state saved and transported to the remote node, and then resumed there. This all
depends on the hypervisor support for two different methods. In any case, it is not an error to pass
this parameter (it will just be ignored if the hypervisor doesn't support it). The option --migration-
mode=live option will request a fully-live migration. The default, when neither option is passed, de‐
pends on the hypervisor parameters (and can be viewed with the gnt-cluster info command).
If the --cleanup option is passed, the operation changes from migration to attempting recovery from a
failed previous migration. In this mode, Ganeti checks if the instance runs on the correct node (and up‐
dates its configuration if not) and ensures the instances' disks are configured correctly. In this mode,
the --non-live option is ignored.
The option -f will skip the prompting for confirmation.
If --allow-failover is specified it tries to fallback to failover if it already can determine that a mi‐
gration won't work (e.g. if the instance is shut down). Please note that the fallback will not happen
during execution. If a migration fails during execution it still fails.
If --ignore-ipolicy is given any instance policy violations occurring during this operation are ignored.
Normally, Ganeti will verify that the hypervisor versions on source and target are compatible and error
out if they are not. If --ignore-hvversions is given, Ganeti will only warn in this case.
The --no-runtime-changes option forbids migrate to alter an instance's runtime before migrating it (eg.
ballooning an instance down because the target node doesn't have enough available memory).
If an instance has the backend parameter always_failover set to true, then the migration is automatically
converted into a failover.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example (and expected output):
# gnt-instance migrate instance1
Instance instance1 will be migrated. Note that migration
might impact the instance if anything goes wrong (e.g. due to bugs in
the hypervisor). Continue?
y/[n]/?: y
Migrating instance instance1.example.com
* checking disk consistency between source and target
* switching node node2.example.com to secondary mode
* changing into standalone mode
* changing disks into dual-master mode
* wait until resync is done
* preparing node2.example.com to accept the instance
* migrating instance to node2.example.com
* switching node node1.example.com to secondary mode
* wait until resync is done
* changing into standalone mode
* changing disks into single-master mode
* wait until resync is done
* done
#
MOVE
move [-f] [--ignore-consistency]
[-n node] [--compress=*compression-mode*] [--shutdown-timeout=*N*]
[--submit] [--print-jobid] [--ignore-ipolicy]
{instance-name}
Move will move the instance to an arbitrary node in the cluster. This works only for instances having a
plain or file disk template.
Note that since this operation is done via data copy, it will take a long time for big disks (similar to
replace-disks for a drbd instance).
The --compress option is used to specify which compression mode is used during the move. Valid values
are 'none' (the default) and any values specified in the 'compression_tools' cluster parameter.
The --shutdown-timeout is used to specify how much time (in minutes) to wait before forcing the shutdown
(e.g. xm destroy in XEN, killing the kvm process for KVM, etc.). By default two minutes are given to
each instance to stop.
The --ignore-consistency option will make Ganeti ignore any errors in trying to shutdown the instance on
its node; useful if the hypervisor is broken and you want to recover the data.
If --ignore-ipolicy is given any instance policy violations occurring during this operation are ignored.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance move -n node3.example.com instance1.example.com
CHANGE-GROUP
change-group [--submit] [--print-jobid]
[--iallocator name] [--to group...] {instance-name}
This command moves an instance to another node group. The move is calculated by an iallocator, either
given on the command line or as a cluster default. Note that the iallocator does only consider disk in‐
formation of the default disk template, even if the instances' disk templates differ from that.
If no specific destination groups are specified using --to, all groups except the one containing the in‐
stance are considered.
See ganeti(7) for a description of --submit and other common options.
Example:
# gnt-instance change-group -I hail --to rack2 inst1.example.com
Tags
ADD-TAGS
add-tags [--from file] {instance-name} {tag...}
Add tags to the given instance. If any of the tags contains invalid characters, the entire operation
will abort.
If the --from option is given, the list of tags will be extended with the contents of that file (each
line becomes a tag). In this case, there is not need to pass tags on the command line (if you do, both
sources will be used). A file name of - will be interpreted as stdin.
LIST-TAGS
list-tags {instance-name}
List the tags of the given instance.
REMOVE-TAGS
remove-tags [--from file] {instance-name} {tag...}
Remove tags from the given instance. If any of the tags are not existing on the node, the entire opera‐
tion will abort.
If the --from option is given, the list of tags to be removed will be extended with the contents of that
file (each line becomes a tag). In this case, there is not need to pass tags on the command line (if you
do, tags from both sources will be removed). A file name of - will be interpreted as stdin.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to the project's issue tracker (https://github.com/ganeti/ganeti/issues) or contact the de‐
velopers using the Ganeti mailing list.
SEE ALSO
Ganeti overview and specifications: ganeti(7) (general overview), ganeti-os-interface(7) (guest OS defin‐
itions), ganeti-extstorage-interface(7) (external storage providers).
Ganeti commands: gnt-cluster(8) (cluster-wide commands), gnt-job(8) (job-related commands), gnt-node(8)
(node-related commands), gnt-instance(8) (instance commands), gnt-os(8) (guest OS commands), gnt-stor‐
age(8) (storage commands), gnt-group(8) (node group commands), gnt-backup(8) (instance import/export com‐
mands), gnt-debug(8) (debug commands).
Ganeti daemons: ganeti-watcher(8) (automatic instance restarter), ganeti-cleaner(8) (job queue cleaner),
ganeti-noded(8) (node daemon), ganeti-rapi(8) (remote API daemon).
Ganeti htools: htools(1) (generic binary), hbal(1) (cluster balancer), hspace(1) (capacity calculation),
hail(1) (IAllocator plugin), hscan(1) (data gatherer from remote clusters), hinfo(1) (cluster information
printer), mon-collector(7) (data collectors interface).
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Ganeti gnt-instance(8)