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English

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Virtual Machine Orchestration ​

Cockpit provides a central control room for all virtual machines (VMs) running across your physical server hardware. You can control their power states, create new VMs from scratch, and schedule backups.

1. Centralized VM Catalog ​

Instead of logging into each physical server separately to find your virtual machines, Cockpit groups them all into a single inventory.

  • 💡 Analogy: The Library Catalog Think of this like a library's central computer search system. Even if books are physically located on different floors or in different branches (Vapor hosts), you search for them in one place. You can search, filter, and organize your VMs into logical folders (like "Development" or "Production") without worrying about which physical server they live on.

Key Inventory Features: ​

  • VM Details View: Shows live charts of CPU and Memory usage, network card settings (IP and MAC addresses), and the history of disk snapshots.
  • Console Access (Screen Sharing): You can open a live remote screen for any VM (using VNC or SPICE) directly inside your web browser. This acts like a virtual monitor and keyboard, letting you configure the VM just as if you were sitting right in front of a physical computer.

2. VM Lifecycle Control (Power & Creation) ​

You can manage the life stages of any VM in your cluster:

  • Power Operations: Turn VMs on, perform a graceful shutdown (like clicking "Shut Down" in Windows), force power-off (like pulling the power plug when a machine freezes), pause, or resume them.
  • Creating a New VM (Provisioning): When creating a new virtual machine, Cockpit guides you through a wizard where you choose:
    • Target Host: Which physical server has the most free capacity to run it.
    • Storage Allocation: Which storage drive should hold the VM's files.
    • Network Assignment: Which network switch it should plug into.
  • VM Templates:
    • 💡 Analogy: The Cookie Cutter Instead of installing an Operating System (like Ubuntu or Windows) and setting up software from scratch every single time, you can create a "Golden Image" (a pre-configured template). You can then use this template like a cookie cutter to stamp out new, identical VMs in seconds.

3. Global Backup & Recovery ​

Keep your virtual machines safe by scheduling automatic backups:

  • Backup Policies: Create schedules (e.g., "Back up all database VMs every night at 2:00 AM") and let the system run them automatically.
  • Storage Repositories: Store backup archives securely on local disk drives or send them to remote cloud storage providers (S3-compatible).
  • Instant Restore: If a VM gets corrupted or experiences a software failure, you can restore it from a backup. You can restore it back to its original physical server, or choose a different server if the original hardware is broken.