VMgenie glossary
Plain-English definitions of the words VMgenie uses across this site and the panel UI. If a phrase here is unclear or you would like us to add a term, the contact page reaches the team.
A
Agent
The agent is the small VMgenie program that runs on every physical server and talks back to the panel. The agent reports per-server usage, applies panel commands (create VM, attach IPv6 block, reboot), and is what the panel authenticates against. The Get Started page shows the one-line install command you paste into the SSH terminal of a new physical server to enrol its agent with your account.
C
Container
In VMgenie terminology, a "container" refers to a managed unit of compute that the panel schedules and reports on. The same panel code that provisions a hardware virtual server can also provision an interface-class container from the same template pool, and the quickstart notes that the panel's status field can lag behind a container that is still serving traffic — always verify from the outside.
E
End customer
An end customer is a user role inside the VMgenie panel, one of the three roles the panel serves alongside the hosting provider who owns the nodes and the reseller accounts that resell inside the panel. The end customer role has its own login to the same panel — separate from the hosting provider's login and from any reseller's — and an end customer manages their own virtual servers inside per-role quotas: creating new VMs, rebooting VMs, and reading the IPv4 and IPv6 the panel assigns each one. The docs page lists all three panel roles and their logins side by side.
H
Hosted panel
A hosted panel is a VMgenie instance that Netquirk runs for you on our own infrastructure, accessed at your-name.vmgen.ie. You can launch one in a few clicks from the Get Started page; the hardware and the agent are Netquirk's responsibility, and you only manage VMs and reseller accounts inside it.
Hosting provider
The hosting provider is a user role inside the VMgenie panel, one of the three roles the panel serves alongside the reseller accounts that resell inside the panel and the end customers who manage their own servers. The hosting provider role owns the nodes — every physical server, every VM, the IPv4 and IPv6 networking between them — and owns the panel itself: the panel's plan, the panel's agent enrolments, the panel's reseller accounts, and the per-role quotas the reseller and end-customer roles work inside. A hosting provider signs in with its own login to the panel, sees every resource the panel manages, and is the role that initially creates the reseller and end-customer accounts that work underneath it.
I
IPv4 universal gateway
The IPv4 universal gateway is the static route 169.254.1.1 the panel programmes into every VM as its default gateway. Because the gateway is the same on every provider, a VM can move to a different physical server without updating the gateway or netmask inside the guest — the migration is invisible to the OS running inside the VM.
IPv6 pool
An IPv6 pool is the block of routable IPv6 your data centre delegates to your account. The panel splits the pool into smaller blocks (a /64, /56 or /48 depending on plan) and assigns those blocks to VMs natively — IPv6 is not NAT'd, so every VM gets a real public address from its block.
O
Origin
The origin is the upstream source that the VMgenie panel pulls templates from. Each physical server you define is configured with an origin URL and downloads OS images from there automatically, so a fresh physical server can join a cluster and host VMs without a manual image upload. A server's per-template pool is the set it keeps after fetching from the origin.
P
Panel
The panel is the VMgenie control panel itself — the web UI and the JSON API at /api/v1/... that the quickstart walks you through. A single panel manages every physical server you own, every VM on each server, the IPv4 and IPv6 networking between them, and (optionally) the end-user accounts that rent VMs on top.
Physical server
A physical server is a piece of hardware running the VMgenie agent that hosts your VMs. It can be a dedicated server you colocate, a machine in your office, or a VM in another provider's cloud — VMgenie only requires the agent to be installed and reachable. Physical server limits depend on your plan: the 14-day trial includes one, Standard up to 5, Pro up to 25, and Business is unlimited. Each server you add can live in a different data centre.
Plan
A plan is the package that sets how many physical servers, VMs, IPv6 blocks and reseller accounts your panel can manage. Every plan is the same panel and the same API: start with a 14-day free trial, then choose Standard at $12/month for small teams, Pro at $49/month for resellers, or Business at $199/month for data centres — the Pricing page has the full comparison.
R
Reseller
A reseller is a user role inside the VMgenie panel, one of the three roles the panel serves alongside the hosting provider who owns the nodes and the end customers who rent servers. The reseller role has its own login to the same panel — separate from the hosting provider's login and from any end customer's — and a reseller manages its own customers and their virtual servers while seeing only the resources assigned to it. Resellers work inside per-role quotas (physical servers, VMs, CPU, RAM and disk) that the hosting provider sets, so a reseller can sell to its own customers without touching the nodes the hosting provider owns or another reseller's resources. From the Pro plan upward the panel supports unlimited reseller accounts; the home page has a Reseller Accounts section that shows the per-user limits and ownership controls in the UI.
Role login
Every role has its own login to the same VMgenie panel: the hosting provider who owns the nodes signs in with its own login, a reseller signs in with its own login and sees only its assigned resources, and an end customer signs in with its own login to manage its own servers. The three logins are separate accounts inside the one panel.
S
Self-hosted panel
A self-hosted panel is a VMgenie instance that you run on hardware you control. You bring your own physical servers, install the VMgenie agent on each, and the same panel you would have used in the cloud talks to them over an outbound API call. Nothing about the product differs from the hosted panel — the difference is who operates the server room.
T
Template
A template is an image of an operating system (for example ubuntu-24.04) that the VMgenie panel uses to create a new virtual server in seconds. Templates are listed by the panel API at GET /api/v1/templates and are passed by name to POST /api/v1/vms; the downloads page lists the supported clients.
Template pool
A template pool is the set of templates a given physical server will host and provision from. Servers can keep their own pool so you can pin specific operating systems to the hardware they belong on — for example, a Windows template to a server with the right CPU features, and a Linux template to a server that does not need them. Pool limits save disk and reduce template-sync time on each server.
V
Virtual server (VM)
A virtual server, also called a VM, is the unit of compute the end customer logs into. Each provisioned server is assigned an IPv4 and an IPv6 automatically when the VM comes up; the panel exposes each VM at /api/v1/vms alongside its own IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and reports the VM as a single row in the plan's resource pool.