Resource Actions

VM Actions Explained

Once you have a VM workload running, you'll find several actions available in the Resources table under the VirtualMachine resource. Here's what each one does:

Action	What It Does	When to Use It
Stop	Immediately terminates the VM and releases compute resources back to the cluster. This is equivalent to yanking the power cord.	When you're done with the VM and want to free up resources. Unsaved work will be lost.
Restart	Fully deletes the existing VM instance and recreates it from scratch. This is a hard reset—yank the plug and plug it back in.	When the VM is unresponsive or you need a clean reboot from the hypervisor level.
Soft Reboot	Sends a reboot signal to the guest OS (Windows). This is the same as clicking "Restart" from within Windows.	For routine reboots — after installing updates, applications, or when Windows asks for a restart.
Pause	Freezes the VM in its current state. The VM remains in memory but stops executing.	Special use cases only — such as temporarily freeing CPU cycles or troubleshooting. Resume when ready.
Migrate	An offline migration moves a virtual machine from one node to another by shutting it down on the source node and restarting it on the target node without maintaining uptime	when you need to move a virtual machine between nodes for maintenance, resource optimization, or troubleshooting and can tolerate downtime.

Tip

For day-to-day reboots, use Soft Reboot — it's graceful and lets Windows shut down properly. Use Restart only when the VM is stuck or unresponsive. Stop is for when you're truly done and want resources back.

Deployment/StatefulSet Actions Explained

Deployment and StatefulSet resources support a hibernate action, letting you scale an individual resource's compute down without deleting the workload.

Action	What It Does	When to Use It
Hibernate	Scales the resource's replicas to 0, deleting its running pods and freeing up the compute those pods were using.	When you want to free up compute for a resource you aren't actively using, without deleting the workload entirely.
Activate	Scales a hibernated resource's replicas back up, recreating its pods.	When you're ready to resume using a hibernated resource.

Hibernating does not save session state

Scaling to 0 replicas deletes the pod, so anything living only in the pod's filesystem or memory is lost. To persist data across a hibernate/activate cycle, mount a Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) to the workload.

Note

Only Deployment and StatefulSet resources support hibernation. Workloads made up of other resource kinds will not show a hibernate action.

DataVolume Actions Explained

DataVolume resources have a clone action available.

Action	What It Does	When to Use It
Clone	Creates an exact copy of the volume, including its data and storage configuration. This will then be tracked by Orion and shown in the Genesi Data Volumes table. It will also be available to add to a workload template from within Genesis.	Use this if you want to utilize this Data Volume for another workload. Example, when creating a golden image for a VM workload