just a followup with more information: The approach I have tried is to update /etc/sysconfig/libvirt-guests as follows: # URIs to check for running guests # example: URIS='default xen:/// vbox+tcp://host/system lxc:///' #URIS=default # action taken on host boot # - start all guests which were running on shutdown are started on boot # regardless on their autostart settings # - ignore libvirt-guests init script won't start any guest on boot, however, # guests marked as autostart will still be automatically started by # libvirtd ON_BOOT=ignore # Number of seconds to wait between each guest start. Set to 0 to allow # parallel startup. START_DELAY=180 # action taken on host shutdown # - suspend all running guests are suspended using virsh managedsave # - shutdown all running guests are asked to shutdown. Please be careful with # this settings since there is no way to distinguish between a # guest which is stuck or ignores shutdown requests and a guest # which just needs a long time to shutdown. When setting # ON_SHUTDOWN=shutdown, you must also set SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT to a # value suitable for your guests. ON_SHUTDOWN=shutdown # If set to non-zero, shutdown will suspend guests concurrently. Number of # guests on shutdown at any time will not exceed number set in this variable. #PARALLEL_SHUTDOWN=0 # Number of seconds we're willing to wait for a guest to shut down. If parallel # shutdown is enabled, this timeout applies as a timeout for shutting down all # guests on a single URI defined in the variable URIS. If this is 0, then there # is no time out (use with caution, as guests might not respond to a shutdown # request). The default value is 300 seconds (5 minutes). #SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT=300 # If non-zero, try to bypass the file system cache when saving and # restoring guests, even though this may give slower operation for # some file systems. #BYPASS_CACHE=0 I have verified the default URIs path in libvirt.conf is correct also and have tried changing the default in the above config file to qemu:///system & qemu:/// All the guests boot at the same time regardless of changes made. I have also tried removing the contents of /etc/libvirt/qemu/autostart/ incase the symbolic links were overriding the libvirt-guests config however nothing starts then (not surprising). ________________________________ From: libvirt-users-bounces(a)redhat.com <libvirt-users-bounces(a)redhat.com&gt; on behalf of Inception Hosting <inbox(a)inceptionhosting.com&gt; Sent: 22 August 2018 13:43:07 To: libvirt-users(a)redhat.com Subject: [libvirt-users] Guest startup delay options ignored Hi Folks, been searching around for a while on this and see similar issues reported going back a number of years without solution. The START_DELAY=(number) seems to be completely ignored in /etc/sysconfig/libvirt-guests which is unfortunate as it means everything starts at once without control. This is fine on NVMe based servers however on the older spinning disks the I/O is creating significant issues. Is anyone aware of any other methods to achieve a start up delay for guest virtual machines on boot? Thanks. Anthony.