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[Beta] Editing Hardware and Increasing Disk, CPU and RAM

CloudShare enables you to adjust your virtual machines' resources on the fly. RAM, CPUs, and disk space can all be adjusted to suit the requirements of a specific VM to help improve performance.

Viewing the Environment Resource Summary

The right side of the Environment Details page shows how much RAM, storage, and CPU capacity the environment is currently using compared with its maximum available capacity. These values apply to the entire environment and are calculated across all VMs. These values are automatically updated when VMs are added or removed.

  • RAM: Shows the total RAM currently used by the environment’s VMs out of the available RAM capacity.
  • HD: Shows the total hard disk storage currently used by the environment’s VMs out of the available storage capacity.
  • CPU: Shows the total CPU capacity currently used by the environment’s VMs out of the available CPU capacity.

Editing a VM's Hardware

To edit a VM's RAM, HD (disk size) and or CPU:

  1. Click the Infrastructure button.
  2. Click the Environments List tab from the left menu and select the relevant environment. 
  3. The Virtual Machines tab of the Environment Details page lists all the VMs in this environment (each row is a VM), as shown below:
  4. To edit a VM, click the VM name in the Virtual Machines tab on the Environment Details page to open the VM Details drawer. The VM Details drawer displays information about the selected VM and lets you edit its settings, as shown below:
  5. Scroll down to the VM Hardware section of the General tab, and edit the following as needed:
  • Total Memory (RAM): Sets the amount of RAM allocated to the VM. Increasing the memory can improve performance for memory-intensive applications, but it also uses more of the environment’s available memory. Clicking the Save changes button will assign the RAM and reboot the machine.
  • Disk Size: Sets the amount of virtual disk storage allocated to the VM. Increase this value when the VM requires more space for the operating system, applications, files, logs, or lab data. If needed, repartition the hard drive from within the VM’s OS. For more, see the Increasing VM Disk Size article.  
  • vCPU: Sets the number of virtual CPU cores allocated to the VM. Increasing the vCPU value can improve performance for CPU-intensive workloads. Note that the limit is 4 cores, 500 GB disk, and 32 GB RAM. For more, see the Increasing VM Disk Size article.

Enabling Virtualization Technology (VT)

CloudShare enables you to run virtualization software on a CloudShare VM. All you have to do is enable virtualization on the VM and then you can run the virtualization software of your choice.

  1. Click the Infrastructure button.
  2. Click the Environments List tab from the left menu and select the relevant environment. 
  3. The Virtual Machines tab of the Environment Details page lists all the VMs in this environment (each row is a VM), as shown below:
  4. To edit a VM, click the VM name in the Virtual Machines tab on the Environment Details page to open the VM Details drawer. 
  5. Scroll down to the Operating System section of the General tab, and check the VT checkbox to enable Virtualization Technology (VT) for the VM. Use this option when the VM needs to run virtualization tools or hypervisors inside it.

You might have some VM templates that do not support virtualization due to an old virtual hardware version. In the case of a VM based on such a template, the VT box is not selectable and you will see a message when you try to select it. If you run into this problem, replace it with a VM based on a newer template.

  1. Click Save Changes and wait for your environment to update. When your environment is finished updating, you will be able to connect to the rebooted VM and then run any virtualization software you choose.  

Note that it is possible to virtualize an ESXi host within CloudShare, which in itself can run virtualized guests. This enables building complex virtual environments when there is a need for direct control of virtual hosts.

Generating a BIOS UUID for a VM

When a CloudShare environment is generated from a snapshot - whether for a class, demo, or single environment creation - the new environment is an exact replica of the environment the snapshot was taken from. Even the Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) of each VM's hardware is identical on the equivalent VM in all environments generated from the same snapshot. In most cases, this is exactly as it should be. 

In the event that your solution requires unique endpoint identification via UUID, CloudShare offers an easy way to configure a snapshot so that it generates a new UUID for a VM each time a new environment is created. 

You can configure a snapshot with unique UUID generation by changing a hardware setting in the environment before taking the snapshot. The configuration takes effect in all environments created from the snapshot. 

To generate unique BIOS UUIDs per environment:

  1. Click the Infrastructure button.
  2. Click the Environments List tab from the left menu and select the relevant environment. 
  3. The Virtual Machines tab of the Environment Details page lists all the VMs in this environment (each row is a VM).
    To edit a VM, click the VM name in the Virtual Machines tab on the Environment Details page to open the VM Details drawer. 
  4. Scroll down to the Operating System section of the General tab, as shown below:
  5. Select the Generate BIOS UUID checkbox for any VMs you want unique UUIDs to be generated for.
  6. Click Save Changes. A notification appears explaining that the Generate BIOS UUID setting does not take effect in the current environment, and that to complete the configuration, you will need to take a snapshot.
  7. When ready, take a snapshot of the environment. A unique BIOS UUID will be generated for the VM in all environments that are created from the snapshot you just took. The Generate BIOS UUID setting will also be initially selected in all such environments.

You can display the BIOS UUID of a VM by running the following command from the command line:

  • Windows: wmic bios get serialnumber
  • Linux: sudo dmidecode -t system | grep Serial

[Beta] VM Shutdown/Power Off 

To shutdown or power off a VM, see Machine Shutdown/Power Off.

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