Patent ID: 8924965

Claim:
A method of transferring peripheral device state as part of a virtual machine migration, comprising: receiving, by a hypervisor of an origin host machine, a notification to transfer device state of a peripheral device controlled by a virtual machine (VM) to a destination host machine as part of a migration process of the VM; requesting, by the hypervisor in cooperation with the VM, the device state of the peripheral device from the VM in response to receiving the notification, wherein the VM stops the peripheral device from operating, retrieves the device state from the stopped peripheral device, and provides, separately from a memory state of the VM, the retrieved device state to the hypervisor via a VM-to-hypervisor communication channel in response to the request; and transferring, by the hypervisor, the provided device state to the destination host machine, wherein the device state is transferred separately from the memory state of the VM.