VirtualBox 3.1 features Teleportation aka live migration

I just finished reading multiple press releases regarding Sun's Virtualbox 3.1 teleportation feature.  This is a functionality you generally see in a more enterprise setting, but it's nice to see that this functionality is here finally with Virtualbox.   Here is a quick walkthrough on using the Teleportation function, since it has to be leveraged from the command line as there isn't a functional GUI management yet for multiple virtualbox servers.

Requirements for Teleportation to work correctly

• Each Virtualbox isntallation must have the VM configured exactly the same
• For best results, similar hardware chipsets is recommended i.e.  Intel to Intel Migration
• The *.vdi disk needs to be on shared storage i.e. NFS, CIFS, iSCSI
• Dedicated Migration Network should be available but not required

The teleport command is part of the controlvm management command from the VBoxManage utility.  Here is the full command that is issued when initiating a migration.

VBoxManage controlvm opensolaris2009 teleport --host vboxsvr2.virtual.lab.local --port 6000 --maxdowntime 300

Explaination of the parameters

opensolaris2009 -- this is the VM that I am migrating, this is case sensitive

--host vboxsvr2.virtual.lab.local -- this is the destination host that I want to migrate my VM to

--port 6000 -- this is the TCP port that I want to migrate my VM over, this is important if you have a firewall configured on your machines

--maxdowntime 300 -- this value is in milliseconds  I generally don't mind a little scheduled downtime, I haven't tried a --maxdowntime 0 migration yet as I'm not too sure this early of version is going to accomplish that feat

Powered by Qumana