Only cloud administrators can perform live migrations. If your cloud is configured to use cells, you can perform live migration within but not between cells. Migration enables an administrator to move a virtual-machine instance from one compute host to another. This feature is useful when a compute host requires maintenance. Migration can also be useful to redistribute the load when many VM instances are running on a specific physical machine. The migration types are: Non-live migration (sometimes referred to simply as 'migration'). The instance is shut down for a period of time to be moved to another hypervisor. In this case, the instance recognizes that it was rebooted. Live migration (or 'true live migration'). Almost no instance downtime. Useful when the instances must be kept running during the migration. The different types of live migration are: Shared storage-based live migration. Both hypervisors have access to shared storage. Block live migration. No shared storage is required. Incompatible with read-only devices such as CD-ROMs and Configuration Drive (config_drive). Volume-backed live migration. Instances are backed by volumes rather than ephemeral disk, no shared storage is required, and migration is supported (currently only available for libvirt-based hypervisors). The following sections describe how to configure your hosts and compute nodes for migrations by using the KVM and XenServer hypervisors.

Hypervisor: KVM with libvirt Shared storage: NOVA-INST-DIR/instances/ (for example, /var/lib/nova/instances) has to be mounted by shared storage. This guide uses NFS but other options, including the OpenStack Gluster Connector are available. Instances: Instance can be migrated with iSCSI-based volumes. Because the Compute service does not use the libvirt live migration functionality by default, guests are suspended before migration and might experience several minutes of downtime. For details, see . This guide assumes the default value for instances_path in your nova.conf file (NOVA-INST-DIR/instances). If you have changed the state_path or instances_path variables, modify the commands accordingly. You must specify vncserver_listen=0.0.0.0 or live migration will not work correctly.

Prepare at least three servers. In this example, we refer to the servers as HostA, HostB, and HostC: HostA is the Cloud Controller, and should run these services: nova-api, nova-scheduler, nova-network, cinder-volume, and nova-objectstore. HostB and HostC are the compute nodes that run nova-compute. Ensure that NOVA-INST-DIR (set with state_path in the nova.conf file) is the same on all hosts. In this example, HostA is the NFSv4 server that exports NOVA-INST-DIR/instances directory. HostB and HostC are NFSv4 clients that mount HostA. Configure your DNS or /etc/hosts and ensure it is consistent across all hosts. Make sure that the three hosts can perform name resolution with each other. As a test, use the ping command to ping each host from one another. $ ping HostA $ ping HostB $ ping HostC Ensure that the UID and GID of your Compute and libvirt users are identical between each of your servers. This ensures that the permissions on the NFS mount works correctly. Export NOVA-INST-DIR/instances from HostA, and ensure it is readable and writable by the Compute user on HostB and HostC. For more information, see: SettingUpNFSHowTo or CentOS/Red Hat: Setup NFS v4.0 File Server Configure the NFS server at HostA by adding the following line to the /etc/exports file: NOVA-INST-DIR/instances HostA/255.255.0.0(rw,sync,fsid=0,no_root_squash) Change the subnet mask (255.255.0.0) to the appropriate value to include the IP addresses of HostB and HostC. Then restart the NFS server: # /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart # /etc/init.d/idmapd restart On both compute nodes, enable the 'execute/search' bit on your shared directory to allow qemu to be able to use the images within the directories. On all hosts, run the following command: $ chmod o+x NOVA-INST-DIR/instances Configure NFS on HostB and HostC by adding the following line to the /etc/fstab file: HostA:/ /NOVA-INST-DIR/instances nfs4 defaults 0 0 Ensure that you can mount the exported directory: $ mount -a -v Check that HostA can see the NOVA-INST-DIR/instances/" directory: $ ls -ld NOVA-INST-DIR/instances/ drwxr-xr-x 2 nova nova 4096 2012-05-19 14:34 nova-install-dir/instances/ Perform the same check on HostB and HostC, paying special attention to the permissions (Compute should be able to write): $ ls -ld NOVA-INST-DIR/instances/ drwxr-xr-x 2 nova nova 4096 2012-05-07 14:34 nova-install-dir/instances/ $ df -k Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 921514972 4180880 870523828 1% / none 16498340 1228 16497112 1% /dev none 16502856 0 16502856 0% /dev/shm none 16502856 368 16502488 1% /var/run none 16502856 0 16502856 0% /var/lock none 16502856 0 16502856 0% /lib/init/rw HostA: 921515008 101921792 772783104 12% /var/lib/nova/instances ( <--- this line is important.) Update the libvirt configurations so that the calls can be made securely. These methods enable remote access over TCP and are not documented here. SSH tunnel to libvirtd's UNIX socket libvirtd TCP socket, with GSSAPI/Kerberos for auth+data encryption libvirtd TCP socket, with TLS for encryption and x509 client certs for authentication libvirtd TCP socket, with TLS for encryption and Kerberos for authentication Restart libvirt. After you run the command, ensure that libvirt is successfully restarted: # stop libvirt-bin && start libvirt-bin $ ps -ef | grep libvirt root 1145 1 0 Nov27 ? 00:00:03 /usr/sbin/libvirtd -d -l Configure your firewall to allow libvirt to communicate between nodes. By default, libvirt listens on TCP port 16509, and an ephemeral TCP range from 49152 to 49261 is used for the KVM communications. Based on the secure remote access TCP configuration you chose, be careful which ports you open, and always understand who has access. For information about ports that are used with libvirt, see the libvirt documentation. You can now configure options for live migration. In most cases, you will not need to configure any options. The following chart is for advanced users only.

By default, the Compute service does not use the libvirt live migration function. To enable this function, add the following line to the nova.conf file: live_migration_flag=VIR_MIGRATE_UNDEFINE_SOURCE,VIR_MIGRATE_PEER2PEER,VIR_MIGRATE_LIVE, VIR_MIGRATE_TUNNELLED The Compute service does not use libvirt's live migration by default because there is a risk that the migration process will never end. This can happen if the guest operating system uses blocks on the disk faster than they can be migrated.

Configuring KVM for block migration is exactly the same as the above configuration in , except that NOVA-INST-DIR/instances is local to each host rather than shared. No NFS client or server configuration is required. To use block migration, you must use the --block-migrate parameter with the live migration command. Block migration is incompatible with read-only devices such as CD-ROMs and Configuration Drive (config_drive). Since the ephemeral drives are copied over the network in block migration, migrations of instances with heavy I/O loads may never complete if the drives are writing faster than the data can be copied over the network.

Compatible XenServer hypervisors. For more information, see the Requirements for Creating Resource Pools section of the XenServer Administrator's Guide. Shared storage. An NFS export, visible to all XenServer hosts. For the supported NFS versions, see the NFS VHD section of the XenServer Administrator's Guide. To use shared storage live migration with XenServer hypervisors, the hosts must be joined to a XenServer pool. To create that pool, a host aggregate must be created with specific metadata. This metadata is used by the XAPI plugins to establish the pool. Add an NFS VHD storage to your master XenServer, and set it as the default storage repository. For more information, see NFS VHD in the XenServer Administrator's Guide. Configure all compute nodes to use the default storage repository (sr) for pool operations. Add this line to your nova.conf configuration files on all compute nodes: sr_matching_filter=default-sr:true Create a host aggregate. This command creates the aggregate, and then displays a table that contains the ID of the new aggregate: $ nova aggregate-create POOL_NAME AVAILABILITY_ZONE Add metadata to the aggregate, to mark it as a hypervisor pool: $ nova aggregate-set-metadata AGGREGATE_ID hypervisor_pool=true $ nova aggregate-set-metadata AGGREGATE_ID operational_state=created Make the first compute node part of that aggregate: $ nova aggregate-add-host AGGREGATE_ID MASTER_COMPUTE_NAME The host is now part of a XenServer pool. Add hosts to the pool: $ nova aggregate-add-host AGGREGATE_ID COMPUTE_HOST_NAME The added compute node and the host will shut down to join the host to the XenServer pool. The operation will fail if any server other than the compute node is running or suspended on the host.

Compatible XenServer hypervisors. The hypervisors must support the Storage XenMotion feature. See your XenServer manual to make sure your edition has this feature. To use block migration, you must use the --block-migrate parameter with the live migration command. Block migration works only with EXT local storage storage repositories, and the server must not have any volumes attached.