22.3. Live KVM migration with virsh
A guest can be migrated to another host with the
virsh
command. The migrate
command accepts parameters in the following format:
# virsh migrate --live GuestName DestinationURL
The
GuestName
parameter represents the name of the guest which you want to migrate.
The
DestinationURL
parameter is the URL or hostname of the destination system. The destination system must run the same version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, be using the same hypervisor and have libvirt
running.
Once the command is entered you will be prompted for the root password of the destination system.
Example: live migration with virsh
This example migrates from test1.example.com
to test2.example.com
. Change the host names for your environment. This example migrates a virtual machine named RHEL4test
.
This example assumes you have fully configured shared storage and meet all the prerequisites (listed here: Migration requirements).
Verify the guest is running
From the source system,test1.example.com
, verifyRHEL4test
is running:[root@test1 ~]# virsh list Id Name State ---------------------------------- 10 RHEL4 running
Migrate the guest
Execute the following command to live migrate the guest to the destination,test2.example.com
. Append/system
to the end of the destination URL to tell libvirt that you need full access.# virsh migrate --live
RHEL4test qemu+ssh://test2.example.com/system
Once the command is entered you will be prompted for the root password of the destination system.Wait
The migration may take some time depending on load and the size of the guest.virsh
only reports errors. The guest continues to run on the source host until fully migrated.Verify the guest has arrived at the destination host
From the destination system,test2.example.com
, verifyRHEL4test
is running:[root@test2 ~]# virsh list Id Name State ---------------------------------- 10 RHEL4 running
The live migration is now complete.
Note
libvirt supports a variety of networking methods including TLS/SSL, unix sockets, SSH, and unencrypted TCP. See Chapter 23, Remote management of guests for more information on using other methods.