HotMigrate

From The FluidVM Wiki

HotMigrate(TM) is a FluidVM feature that lets you live migrate virtual servers from one compute node to the other. Not all supported virtualization technologies support HotMigrate, for example Amazon EC2.

Initiating HotMigrate

HotMigrate can be initiated from the FluidVM browser based interface by simply dragging and dropping the virtual server in question from its hosting compute node to another. By default only compute nodes accessible to the user who is logged in are visible.

As an alternate method, virtual server migration can also be initiated by clicking on the "Migrate" option found in the virtual server's Home pane.

Special note for Xen based virtual servers

For HotMigrate to work, the virtual server must be based on SAN Storage. Virtual servers based on local storage can't be migrated. The storage target must be visible on the destination for HotMigrate to succeed.

Special note on OpenVZ virtual servers

Unlike in Xen, OpenVZ virtual servers can be migrated independent of the storage they reside on. But please note that while migrating local storage based virtual servers, the whole file system needs to be transferred from the source to the destination compute node. The time this will take will depend on factors like how big the virtual server file system is, how capable the network is and how busy systems are in general. OpenVZ virtual servers based on local storage initiate lots of I/O when they need to be migrated.

FluidVM is the first in the market to support OpenVZ virtual servers on SAN storage. It has the huge advantage of minuscule migration times and centralized storage, to name a few. Since there is no file system to transfer during migration, it is only a matter of saving and restoring the virtual server context, which is usually pretty fast. Typical SAN based OpenVZ virtual servers take a few seconds to migrate and become fully functional on the destination node.