CLI

CLI tour

List a three-host cluster, start a VM, and live-migrate it to another host — four commands, recorded.

  1. List the hosts, with the CPU and memory each one has in use and the litevirt version it runs.

    lv host ls
NAME    ADDRESS      STATE        CPU    MEMORY            VMs  VERSION
node-1  10.0.50.11   HOST_ACTIVE  6/64   24576/262144 MiB  2    v1.0.10
node-2  10.0.50.12   HOST_ACTIVE  4/64   16384/262144 MiB  1    v1.0.10
node-3  10.0.50.13   HOST_ACTIVE  0/32   0/131072 MiB      0    v1.0.10

  2. Start a VM. No host is named, so placement puts it on node-2.

    lv run --name web-01 --image ubuntu-24.04 --cpu 2 --memory 2048
VM web-01 created on node-2 (state: VM_RUNNING)

  3. Live-migrate it to node-3. Memory copies across while the VM keeps running, then one 74 ms switchover.

    lv migrate web-01 node-3
  live-migrating web-01: node-2 → node-3
  transferring memory (2048 MiB) ▕████████████████████▏ 100%
  ✓ migrated — 1 switchover, 74ms downtime · web-01 now on node-3

  4. Check where it runs now.

    lv ls
NAME    HOST    STATE       CPU  MEMORY    IP
web-01  node-3  VM_RUNNING  2    2048 MiB  10.0.50.51

What happened

The recording runs against a three-host cluster. lv host ls shows each host’s CPU and memory in use. lv run creates web-01 without naming a host, so placement picks the one with room. lv migrate moves the running VM to node-3: memory copies across while the guest keeps running, then a single switchover hands it over. lv ls confirms where it landed.

Try it on your cluster

Every command takes --help. A few that pair with the ones above:

lv host ls                     # hosts, load, and versions
lv ls                          # VMs across the whole cluster
lv migrate <vm> <host>         # live-migrate a running VM
lv snapshot create <vm> <name> # snapshot before you change something

The CLI reference lists every command and flag, and Migration and failover covers what happens when a host goes away on its own.