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Configure migrations

Note

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.

KVM-Libvirt

Shared storage

Prerequisites

  • 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.

Notes

  • 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 Enabling true live migration.
  • Compute calculates the amount of downtime required using the RAM size of the disk being migrated, in accordance with the live_migration_downtime configuration parameters. Migration downtime is measured in steps, with an exponential backoff between each step. This means that the maximum downtime between each step starts off small, and is increased in ever larger amounts as Compute waits for the migration to complete. This gives the guest a chance to complete the migration successfully, with a minimum amount of downtime.
  • 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.
  • You must specify the instances_path in each node that runs nova-compute. The mount point for instances_path must be the same value for each node, or live migration will not work correctly.

Example Compute installation environment

  • 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.

Configuring your system

  1. 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

  2. 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.

  3. Ensure you can access SSH without a password and without StrictHostKeyChecking between HostB and HostC as nova user (set with the owner of nova-compute service). Direct access from one compute host to another is needed to copy the VM file across. It is also needed to detect if the source and target compute nodes share a storage subsystem.

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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.)

  8. 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\

  9. 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.

  10. Configure the downtime required for the migration by adjusting these parameters in the nova.conf file:

    live_migration_downtime
live_migration_downtime_steps
live_migration_downtime_delay

    The live_migration_downtime parameter sets the maximum permitted downtime for a live migration, in milliseconds. This setting defaults to 500 milliseconds.

    The live_migration_downtime_steps parameter sets the total number of incremental steps to reach the maximum downtime value. This setting defaults to 10 steps.

    The live_migration_downtime_delay parameter sets the amount of time to wait between each step, in seconds. This setting defaults to 75 seconds.

  11. You can now configure other options for live migration. In most cases, you will not need to configure any options. For advanced configuration options, see the OpenStack Configuration Reference Guide <http://docs.openstack.org/ liberty/config-reference/content/list-of-compute-config-options.html #config_table_nova_livemigration>.

Enabling true live migration

Prior to the Kilo release, the Compute service did not use the libvirt live migration function by default. To enable this function, add the following line to the [libvirt] section of the nova.conf file:

live_migration_flag=VIR_MIGRATE_UNDEFINE_SOURCE,VIR_MIGRATE_PEER2PEER,VIR_MIGRATE_LIVE,VIR_MIGRATE_TUNNELLED

On versions older than Kilo, 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.

Block migration

Configuring KVM for block migration is exactly the same as the above configuration in configuring-migrations-kvm-shared-storage the section called shared storage, except that NOVA-INST-DIR/instances is local to each host rather than shared. No NFS client or server configuration is required.

Note

  • 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.

XenServer

Shared storage

Prerequisites

  • 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.

    Note

    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 plug-ins to establish the pool.

Using shared storage live migrations with XenServer Hypervisors

  1. 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.

  2. 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

  3. 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.

  4. Add hosts to the pool

    $ nova aggregate-add-host AGGREGATE_ID COMPUTE_HOST_NAME

    Note

    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.

Block migration

  • Compatible XenServer hypervisors. The hypervisors must support the Storage XenMotion feature. See your XenServer manual to make sure your edition has this feature.

    Note

    • 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.