Danger Zone
Updated
The Danger Zone holds the controls that stop the host, and the one action that cannot be undone. Rebooting and shutting down interrupt every machine; a factory reset erases the host and returns it to first-run setup.
Host power
Section titled “Host power”Reboot or shut down the host from here. Both interrupt running machines. A reboot asks for an ordinary confirmation, because the host comes back on its own; a shut down asks you to type a confirmation phrase.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reboot host | Reboots the host now. Every running machine is first asked to shut itself down, with about a minute in total for that, and the ones that do not stop in time are taken down anyway. Machines then come back according to VM autostart |
| Shut down host | Powers the host off. Running VMs are interrupted, and you need physical or out-of-band power control to start it again. Type SHUT DOWN HOST to confirm |
While the host is going down the console posts a status message and then stops answering: a reboot leaves the page unreachable for a few minutes, and a shutdown stays down until you power the machine on again.
Factory reset
Section titled “Factory reset”What to read before you confirm
Section titled “What to read before you confirm”The button is labelled Factory reset. The warning above it states that the
action cannot be undone and that management access returns to IPv4 DHCP on HTTP
port 80, so physical or out-of-band console access may be required. The
confirmation dialog repeats that all Virtainer data and network profiles are
erased, that management returns on IPv4 DHCP at HTTP port 80, and that the address
may change. To proceed you type FACTORY RESET, then press Wipe everything.
Because the address can move, plan to find the host again through its local console or your DHCP server once it is back.
Once it finishes, the host runs the first-run setup wizard again on the next visit, as though it had just been installed.
Before you use it
Section titled “Before you use it”Ask whether a narrower action does what you actually want:
| If you want to | Do this instead |
|---|---|
| Rebuild one machine | Delete it, or reinstall it from its image |
| Roll a workload back | Redeploy the AppVM, or restore a VM snapshot |
| Undo a bad host update | Reboot into the previous image. See OS updates |
| Undo a bad network change | Let the confirmation window expire. See Networks |
| Start over on storage only | Dissolve and rebuild the pool, which destroys every machine disk and volume stored on it and is refused while any machine exists. See Storage pools |
| Take the host down or bring it back | Use Reboot host or Shut down host above |
| Reset a forgotten password | Change the web account in Settings, or use the host console |
Copy anything you need off the host first, including data volumes. See Backup and restore. A factory reset is not a way to free space or fix a slow host.
What it does not touch
Section titled “What it does not touch”The installed host operating system image and the hardware stay as they are. A factory reset clears Virtainer Free’s own state and the data it owns; it does not reinstall the machine or change which OS image it boots, and it leaves files that are not Virtainer Free’s to manage alone.
Five things make the button refuse to run, and each one has to be cleared first:
- a host image update currently being applied
- an OS image staged for the next boot, or an update still waiting to be verified after a reboot
- any operation that has not reached a final state, including one the host cannot resolve and marks uncertain
- a network change inside its confirmation window
- a storage plan still being applied
The refusal is the point: a reset that ran underneath one of those would leave the host holding a change with no record of it. Clear the pending thing, then reset.