How to increase screen resolution on XenServer 7 GUI Virtual Machine (VM)

Objective

If your intention is to use XenServer’s virtual machine as a remote desktop, the default screen resolution may not be satisfactory for your purposes.

The objective is to increase screen resolution on XenServer 7 GUI Virtual Machine.

Requirements

Privileged access to XenServer 7 system.

Difficulty

EASY

Conventions

• # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
• $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Instructions

Obtain VM UUID

First, we need to obtain a relevant UUID of the Virtual Machine on which we wish to increase a screen resolution:

# xe vm-list 
uuid ( RO)           : 09a3d0d3-f16c-b215-9460-50dde9123891
     name-label ( RW): CentOS 7
    power-state ( RO): running

Tip: It saves some time if you save this UUID as a shell variable:

# UUID=09a3d0d3-f16c-b215-9460-50dde9123891

Shutdown VM

Gracefully shutdown your VM or shutdown using xe vm-vm-shutdown command:

# xe vm-shutdown uuid=$UUID

Update VGA a VIDEORAM settings

Check your current VGA a VIDEORAM parameter settings:

# xe vm-param-get uuid=$UUID param-name="platform" param-key=vga
std
# xe vm-param-get uuid=$UUID param-name="platform" param-key=videoram
8

To increase a screen resolution, update your VGA to std ( if its already set, nothing needs to be done ) and videoram to some greater number in megabytes. Eg. 16:

# xe vm-param-set uuid=$UUID platform:vga=std
# xe vm-param-set uuid=$UUID platform:videoram=16

Start VM

# xe vm-start uuid=$UUID