4.4. Live KVM Migration with virsh A guest virtual machine can be migrated to another host physical machine with the virsh command. The migrate command accepts parameters in the following format: Note that the --live option may be eliminated when live migration is not desired. Additional options are listed in Section 4.4.2, "Additional Options for the virsh migrate Command" . The GuestName parameter represents the name of the guest virtual machine which you want to migrate. The DestinationURL parameter is the connection URL of the destination host physical machine. The destination system must run the same version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, be using the same hypervisor and have libvirt running. Note The DestinationURL parameter for normal migration and peer-to-peer migration has different semantics: normal migration: the DestinationURL is the URL of the target host physical machine as seen from the source guest virtual machine. peer-to-peer migration: DestinationURL is the URL of the target host physical machine as seen from the source host physical machine. Once the command is entered, you will be prompted for the root password of the destination system. Important An entry for the destination host physical machine, in the /etc/hosts file on the source server is required for migration to succeed. Enter the IP address and host name for the destination host physical machine in this file as shown in the following example, substituting your destination host physical machine's IP address and host name: Example: Live Migration with virsh This example migrates from host1.example.com to host2.example.com . Change the host physical machine names for your environment. This example migrates a virtual machine named guest1-rhel6-64 . This example assumes you have fully configured shared storage and meet all the prerequisites (listed here: Migration requirements ). Verify the guest virtual machine is running From the source system, host1.example.com , verify guest1-rhel6-64 is running: Migrate the guest virtual machine Execute the following command to live migrate the guest virtual machine to the destination, host2.example.com . Append /system to the end of the destination URL to tell libvirt that you need full access. 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 virtual machine. virsh only reports errors. The guest virtual machine continues to run on the source host physical machine until fully migrated. Note During the migration, the completion percentage indicator number is likely to decrease multiple times before the process finishes. This is caused by a recalculation of the overall progress, as source memory pages that are changed after the migration starts need to be be copied again. Therefore, this behavior is expected and does not indicate any problems with the migration. Verify the guest virtual machine has arrived at the destination host From the destination system, host2.example.com , verify guest1-rhel6-64 is running: The live migration is now complete. Note libvirt supports a variety of networking methods including TLS/SSL, UNIX sockets, SSH, and unencrypted TCP. Refer to Chapter 5, Remote Management of Guests for more information on using other methods. Note Non-running guest virtual machines cannot be migrated with the virsh migrate command. To migrate a non-running guest virtual machine, the following script should be used: 4.4.1. Additional Tips for Migration with virsh It is possible to perform multiple, concurrent live migrations where each migration runs in a separate command shell. However, this should be done with caution and should involve careful calculations as each migration instance uses one MAX_CLIENT from each side (source and target). As the default setting is 20, there is enough to run 10 instances without changing the settings. Should you need to change the settings, refer to the procedure Procedure 4.1, "Configuring libvirtd.conf" . Open the libvirtd.conf file as described in Procedure 4.1, "Configuring libvirtd.conf" . Look for the Processing controls section. Change the max_clients and max_workers parameters settings. It is recommended that the number be the same in both parameters. The max_clients will use 2 clients per migration (one per side) and max_workers will use 1 worker on the source and 0 workers on the destination during the perform phase and 1 worker on the destination during the finish phase. Important The max_clients and max_workers parameters settings are effected by all guest virtual machine connections to the libvirtd service. This means that any user that is using the same guest virtual machine and is performing a migration at the same time will also beholden to the limits set in the max_clients and max_workers parameters settings. This is why the maximum value needs to be considered carefully before performing a concurrent live migration. Save the file and restart the service. Note There may be cases where a migration connection drops because there are too many ssh sessions that have been started, but not yet authenticated. By default, sshd allows only 10 sessions to be in a "pre-authenticated state" at any time. This setting is controlled by the MaxStartups parameter in the sshd configuration file (located here: /etc/ssh/sshd_config ), which may require some adjustment. Adjusting this parameter should be done with caution as the limitation is put in place to prevent DoS attacks (and over-use of resources in general). Setting this value too high will negate its purpose. To change this parameter, edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config , remove the # from the beginning of the MaxStartups line, and change the 10 (default value) to a higher number. Remember to save the file and restart the sshd service. For more information, refer to the sshd_config man page.

Commands:
virsh migrate --live GuestName DestinationURL
10.0.0.20 host2.example.com
virsh list Id Name State ---------------------------------- 10 guest1-rhel6-64 running
virsh migrate --live guest1-rhel6-64 qemu+ssh://host2.example.com/system
virsh list Id Name State ---------------------------------- 10 guest1-rhel6-64 running
virsh dumpxml Guest1 > Guest1.xml virsh -c qemu+ssh://<target-system-FQDN> define Guest1.xml virsh undefine Guest1
################################################################# # Processing controls # The maximum number of concurrent client connections to allow over all sockets combined. #max_clients = 20 The minimum limit sets the number of workers to start up initially. If the number of active clients exceeds this, then more threads are spawned, upto max_workers limit. Typically you'd want max_workers to equal maximum number of clients allowed #min_workers = 5 #max_workers = 20 The number of priority workers. If all workers from above pool will stuck, some calls marked as high priority (notably domainDestroy) can be executed in this pool. #prio_workers = 5 Total global limit on concurrent RPC calls. Should be at least as large as max_workers. Beyond this, RPC requests will be read into memory and queued. This directly impact memory usage, currently each request requires 256 KB of memory. So by default upto 5 MB of memory is used # XXX this isn't actually enforced yet, only the per-client limit is used so far #max_requests = 20 Limit on concurrent requests from a single client connection. To avoid one client monopolizing the server this should be a small fraction of the global max_requests and max_workers parameter #max_client_requests = 5 #################################################################