KVM api to start virtual machine

python kvm
user1479836 picture user1479836 · Sep 3, 2012 · Viewed 9.9k times · Source

I was wondering if there is a KVM API which allows you to start a KVM virtual machine using a simple command, from a python script.

My Python script performs a series of checks to see whether or not we need to start a specific VM, and I would like to start a VM if I need to.

All I need now is to find the API calls, but I can't find a simple call to start them within the libvirt website. Does anybody know if this is possible?

Answer

Density 21.5 picture Density 21.5 · Sep 4, 2012

You can use the create() function from the python API bindings of libvirt:

import libvirt

#connect to hypervisor running on localhost
conn = libvirt.open('qemu:///system')

dom0 = conn.lookupByName('my-vm-1')
dom0.create()

basically the python API is the C API, called by libvirt.C_API_CALL minus the virConnect part or conn.C_API_CALL minus the virDomain part.

see the libvirt API create call and here.

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