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Is it possible to transfer a VirtualBox VM from one server to another without shutting it down? Is there any way to achive this? Does this technology have a name to identify it?

As far as I know Xen provides such a functionality, but when I played around with it, I had major issues in stability. For instance shutting down my Xen server using the reset-button, did not only simply restart, but had to be configured and checked first.

Same for KVM, providing a very good way to configure the "ideal" computer. I was impressed by it's vastness, but in terms of performance I encountered big issues. Does KVM provide this functionality?

I tried myself with VMWare as well. It is very similar to VirtualBox, but I couldn't find any possibility for the above question.

Melauki Mawi
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    This technology is called live migration and it not available for desktop virtualization products like VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation/Player. No server should ever be shut down by the reset button - live migration *obviously* can't work when doing this. – Sven Dec 17 '14 at 08:23
  • @Sven Thanks for your quick and accurate answer. You helped me a lot. And sorry for bein off topic. Which forum or QA should I approach fur enthusiast questions like this one? –  Dec 17 '14 at 08:27
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    If you need a High Availability solution, you’ll have to look into enterprise virtualization products. HA is expensive, though. But it can deal with crashing/failing machines. – Daniel B Dec 17 '14 at 09:42
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    @SvW VirtualBox is supporting live migration since nov 2009. – jlliagre Dec 18 '14 at 02:10
  • @jlliagre I already have posted that as an answer. Please check, they all support live migration. – Melauki Mawi Dec 18 '14 at 02:15
  • @MelaukiMawi This is incorrect. VMWare **Workstation** & **Player** do not support live migration. VirtualBox was the first type 1 hypervisor to do it. Don't confuse different products from the same editor. – jlliagre Dec 18 '14 at 02:35
  • @jlliagre What is this then? -> http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/features/vmotion – Melauki Mawi Dec 19 '14 at 02:35
  • @MelaukiMawi Again, please don't confuse different products from the same editor. Vmotion is unavailable with VMWare Workstation/Player. Vsphere is an enterprise level bare metal hypervisor while VMWare Workstation and VMware player are hypervisors running on top of standard operating systems. – jlliagre Dec 19 '14 at 07:23

2 Answers2

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The desktop virtualization technology VirtualBox does indeed provide live migration. It is called teleportation though. An example can be seen here.

XEN does provide this functionality.

And KVM provides this functionality as well.

And VMWare provides this functionality as well through vSphere.

Edit: Microsoft Hyper-V provides this functionality as well.

Melauki Mawi
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You may be able to get the guest OS to "think" it didn't shut down, even though it actually will.

Don't most VM's have a way to save to disk a "snapshot" of the running guest system? Then you can close it normally, move the files to another computer, and start it up again loading the "snapshot" so it thinks it's been running the whole time...

Or, to keep doing whatever the guest OS is doing, you could start a second guest running somewhere else that can perform the same tasks, transfer the workload from the first guest to the second, then shutdown the second, hopefully without a long interruption of service.

But one way or the other, I think the original guest OS will be stopping

Xen2050
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  • Thank you for your quick response, though that was not the question. The question was `...transfer a VirtualBox VM from one server to another without shutting it down?...`. Therefore, shutting it down and creating that snapshot would result in a time of the vm not being available. Therefore, not an option. – Melauki Mawi Dec 17 '14 at 08:54
  • You should clarify your question, it's unclear what "it" is that can't be shut down. And if you mean the VM guest OS being available 100% of the time, then I think the answer's "no" – Xen2050 Dec 17 '14 at 09:03
  • The question is clear to me. Sorry for offending you, that wasn't my intention. I already found out, that ´live migration` is possible with all of the above mentioned softwares, but I cannot post it, because I need at least a reputation of 10. – Melauki Mawi Dec 17 '14 at 09:05
  • No problem :) Updated with another option to maintain "service" (whatever it is) – Xen2050 Dec 17 '14 at 09:07
  • :) i'm quite interested on what the solution is for this issue. – Charm_quark Dec 17 '14 at 09:28
  • @Charm_quark I posted my answer. I could not accept it though as there is the restriction, that this will only be possible tomorrow. I will catch up on that tomorrow then... – Melauki Mawi Dec 18 '14 at 02:02