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Initiating and canceling live migration

To move a running virtual machine (VM) to a different node without interrupting the workload, you can initiate a live migration. You can also cancel an ongoing migration to keep the VM on its original node.

You can initiate the live migration of a virtual machine (VM) to another node by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console or the command line.

You can cancel a live migration by using the web console or the command line. The VM remains on its original node.

Tip

You can also initiate and cancel live migration by using the virtctl migrate <vm_name> and virtctl migrate-cancel <vm_name> commands.

Initiating live migration

Initiating live migration by using the web console

You can live migrate a running virtual machine (VM) to a different node in the cluster by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Note

The Migrate action is visible to all users but only cluster administrators can initiate a live migration.

Prerequisites

  • You have the kubevirt.io:migrate RBAC role or you are a cluster administrator.

  • The VM is migratable.

  • If the VM is configured with a host model CPU, the cluster has an available node that supports the CPU model.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Virtualization → VirtualMachines in the web console.

  2. Take either of the following steps:

    • Click the Options menu kebab beside the VM you want to migrate, hover over the Migrate option, and select Compute.

    • Open the VM details page of the VM you want to migrate, click the Actions menu, hover over the Migrate option, and select Compute.

  3. In the Migrate Virtual Machine to a different Node dialog box, select either Automatically Selected Node or Specific Node.

    1. If you selected the Specific Node option, choose a node from the list.

  4. Click Migrate Virtual Machine.

Initiating live migration by using the CLI

You can initiate the live migration of a running virtual machine (VM) by using the command line to create a VirtualMachineInstanceMigration object for the VM.

Prerequisites

  • You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • You have the kubevirt.io:migrate RBAC role or you are a cluster administrator.

Procedure

  1. Create a VirtualMachineInstanceMigration manifest for the VM that you want to migrate:

    apiVersion: kubevirt.io/v1
kind: VirtualMachineInstanceMigration
metadata:
  name: <migration_name>
spec:
  vmiName: <vm_name>

  2. Create the object by running the following command:

    $ oc create -f <migration_name>.yaml

    The VirtualMachineInstanceMigration object triggers a live migration of the VM. This object exists in the cluster for as long as the virtual machine instance is running, unless manually deleted.

Verification

  • Obtain the VM status by running the following command:

    $ oc describe vmi <vm_name> -n <namespace>

    Example output:

    # ...
Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Probe Time:       <nil>
    Last Transition Time:  <nil>
    Status:                True
    Type:                  LiveMigratable
  Migration Method:  LiveMigration
  Migration State:
    Completed:                    true
    End Timestamp:                2018-12-24T06:19:42Z
    Migration UID:                d78c8962-0743-11e9-a540-fa163e0c69f1
    Source Node:                  node2.example.com
    Start Timestamp:              2018-12-24T06:19:35Z
    Target Node:                  node1.example.com
    Target Node Address:          10.9.0.18:43891
    Target Node Domain Detected:  true

Canceling live migration

Canceling live migration by using the web console

You can cancel the live migration of a virtual machine (VM) by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Prerequisites

  • You have the kubevirt.io:migrate RBAC role or you are a cluster administrator.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Virtualization → VirtualMachines in the web console.

  2. Select Cancel Migration on the Options menu kebab beside a VM.

Canceling live migration by using the CLI

Cancel the live migration of a virtual machine by deleting the VirtualMachineInstanceMigration object associated with the migration.

Prerequisites

  • You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • You have the kubevirt.io:migrate RBAC role or you are a cluster administrator.

Procedure

  • Delete the VirtualMachineInstanceMigration object that triggered the live migration, migration-job in this example:

    $ oc delete vmim migration-job

Additional resources