virt-manager

Launch the GUI

$ virt-manager

$ virt-manager --connect [hypervisor_uri]

$ virt-manager --no-fork

$ virt-manager --debug

$ virt-manager --show-domain-creator

$ virt-manager --show-domain-editor [name|id|uuid]

$ virt-manager --show-domain-performance [name|id|uuid]

$ virt-manager --show-host-summary

virt-manager [OPTIONS]

--connect=URI
    Connect to a specified libvirt URI. Examples include qemu:///system for local KVM, or qemu+ssh://user@host/system for a remote KVM host.

--no-fork
    Prevent the application from forking into the background, useful for debugging or when running from a script.

--debug
    Print extensive debug information to standard output, aiding in troubleshooting.

--show-domain=NAME|ID|UUID
    Immediately open the details dialog for a specific virtual machine identified by its name, numeric ID, or UUID.

--show-host=URI
    Immediately open the host details dialog for a specific connection URI, showing hypervisor and system information.

--no-main-window
    Do not display the main connection browser window upon startup. This is useful when directly opening a specific domain or host.

--version
    Display the program's version number and then exit.

--help
    Show a help message listing all available command-line options and then exit.

virt-manager is a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines through the libvirt library. It provides a comprehensive graphical overview of virtual machines, supporting various hypervisors like KVM, Xen, and LXC. With virt-manager, users can easily perform a wide range of virtualization tasks, including creating new virtual machines, configuring their hardware resources, and managing their lifecycle (start, stop, pause, resume, migrate). It offers features like real-time performance graphs, direct console access to VMs, and management of virtual networks, storage pools, and host devices. This powerful and intuitive tool greatly simplifies complex virtualization administration, making it an essential asset for anyone working with virtualized environments on Linux desktops.

virt-manager relies on the libvirt daemon being installed and running on the host system. Users must have appropriate permissions (e.g., membership in the 'libvirt' group or root privileges) to connect to and manage virtual machines. While powerful for graphical management, it is not designed for scripting or headless server environments, where command-line tools like virsh are typically preferred.

virt-manager can connect to and manage virtual machines on remote hosts using various protocols, most commonly SSH. This allows for centralized management of multiple virtualization servers from a single desktop interface, enhancing administrative efficiency and flexibility.

The strength of virt-manager lies in its deep integration with the libvirt virtualization management library. libvirt provides a stable, consistent, and hypervisor-agnostic API, allowing virt-manager to interact seamlessly with different virtualization technologies (KVM, Xen, LXC) through a unified and powerful interface.

virt-manager was developed by Red Hat as a key component of the libvirt virtualization ecosystem. Its initial release aimed to provide a user-friendly graphical interface for managing virtual machines, particularly those powered by KVM and Xen. Over the years, its development has closely followed the advancements in libvirt and underlying hypervisors, continuously adding support for new features and improving usability. It has become a standard tool in many Linux distributions for desktop virtualization management, significantly simplifying the administration of virtualized environments.

virsh(1), virt-install(1), virt-viewer(1), libvirtd(8), qemu-system-x86_64(1)