Domain lifecycle and state transitions

A libvirt domain is a guest definition plus its runtime state. Persistent definitions survive host reboots; transient domains disappear when stopped.

Inspect state

virsh list --all
virsh domstate guest01 --reason
virsh dominfo guest01
virsh domid guest01

Controlled transitions

virsh start guest01
virsh shutdown guest01
virsh reboot guest01
virsh suspend guest01
virsh resume guest01

shutdown requests an orderly guest shutdown and requires a responsive guest. destroy is equivalent to removing power; reserve it for a documented recovery decision.

Persistence and autostart

virsh dominfo guest01 | grep Persistent
virsh autostart guest01
virsh autostart --disable guest01

Autostart is host policy, not high availability. It does not coordinate dependencies, fencing, storage ownership, or split-brain prevention.