HP Integrity Virtual Machines 4.2: Installation, Configuration, and Administration

10 Migrating Virtual Machines
There are several different forms of Virtual Machine migration. With the hpvmmigrate command,
you can move either an offline virtual machine or a live, online virtual machine running a guest
operating system and applications from a source VM Host system to a target VM Host system.
For offline migration, the hpvmmigrate command has been available with HP Integrity Virtual
Machines Version 1.2 and later. The Online VM Migration feature for online guests is available
starting with HP Integrity Virtual Machine Version 4.2.
This chapter includes the following topics:
• “Introduction to Virtual Machine Migration”
• “Command Line Interface for Online and Offline Migration”
• “VM Host and Virtual Machine Configuration Considerations”
• “Migrating Guests from Physical to Virtual Machines”
10.1 Introduction to Virtual Machine Migration
Virtual machines can be moved from one VM Host system to another in a variety of ways.
Integrity VM provides the following types of virtual machine migration:
• To move the virtual machine from one VM Host system to another, use the hpvmmigrate
command. The virtual machine can be either a non-running virtual machine configuration
(offline migration) or a running guest (online migration). Online migration enables a running
guest and its applications to be moved from one VM Host to another without service
interruption. All guest I/O connections to storage and networks remain active throughout
the online migration, and the guest and all its applications continue operating without a
reboot or application restart.
• To migrate a Serviceguard Packaged guest online, use the hpvmsg_move command. For
more information, see Section 10.4 (page 181) .
• To migrate from a physical machine to a virtual machine, use the p2vassist utility. For
example, use this method to move virtual machines from a partition or a system to a VM
Host system. Guests must be shut down before the procedure and restarted after the
migration. For more information, see Section 10.5 (page 182).
Figure 10-1 illustrates the process of moving a guest from Host A to Host B offline.
10.1 Introduction to Virtual Machine Migration 165