The life cycle of a VM includes its creation, testing, modifications, use in your environment, and removal when it’s no longer needed.
For example, in setting up your VM environment, you might want to first create basic VMs from which you can create templates. Then, to enable the most efficient use of your current hardware capabilities, you can use those templates to create the many different specialized VMs that you need to perform the various jobs. You can create and manage VM-related jobs through the Development Client interface.
Life cycle functions are performed one at a time per given VM as jobs on the host server in order to prevent conflicts in using the VM. Life cycle events include:
Creating a VM
Starting and stopping a VM
Pausing, suspending, and resuming a VM
Installing the Orchestrate Agent on a VM
Creating a template from a VM
Using the VM (starting, stopping, pausing, suspending, restarting, and shutting down)
Running jobs for the VM
Editing a VM
Editing a template
Moving a stopped VM to another host server
Migrating a running VM to another host server
Resynchronizing a VM to ensure that the state of the VM displayed in the Orchestrate Development Client is accurate
Cloning a VM from a template
To view the histories of life cycle events or why they might fail, simply review a VM’s logs. For more information, see Section 5.2, Using Feedback to Manage VMs.