3.1.0beta Teleportation

[bytejumper]

One of the features listed in 3.1.0 is Teleportation. How exactly do we "test" this out. I don't see any options in the software or the manual regarding this. This is a great concept and i'd like to try it out. Thanks.

[Sasquatch]

Did you bother to read the sticky here? It explains what it is and how it works. It's the same idea as on Xen. Both Hosts must have the machine registered and a common location need to be available.

[Technologov]

See Introduction to teleporting (aka Live Migration):
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=24419

[nike]

Python shell in the trunk have 3 commands designed to simplify teleportation set up and operations:
- openportal: will prepare and start VM (hopefully correctly configured) to become teleportation target
- closeportal: will undo changes made by openportal
- teleport: will teleport currently running VM to given host:port

[liangsuilong]

Teleportion looks very well. But I have some important question to ask.

Can I move a two-virtual-processor VM from a phyical machine which has VT to a physical machine which has no VT. Is it OK.? Will it crash when VM finish migration?

Another question is whether Virtualbox provide a GUI tool for teleportion. I know virt-manager in Fedora 12 can migrate the VM from one machine to another machine. You just need to click the mouse.

VirtualBox Web Console is quite suitable for remote management, especially for teleportion. Just hope it will be merged into VirtualBox mainline soon.

[Technologov]

liangsuilong :

You cannot run SMP guests (=two-virtual-processor VM) without VT. So you cannot migrate those guests either.

[sandervl]

Teleportion looks very well. But I have some important question to ask.

Can I move a two-virtual-processor VM from a phyical machine which has VT to a physical machine which has no VT. Is it OK.? Will it crash when VM finish migration?

Another question is whether Virtualbox provide a GUI tool for teleportion. I know virt-manager in Fedora 12 can migrate the VM from one machine to another machine. You just need to click the mouse.

VirtualBox Web Console is quite suitable for remote management, especially for teleportion. Just hope it will be merged into VirtualBox mainline soon.

The settings of both source and target VMs have to match. That includes VT.

GUI integration may or may not be included in 3.1. (if not, then later)

[Bernd Hohmann]

GUI integration may or may not be included in 3.1. (if not, then later)

Will there be a feature that VBox can move/copy the VM-Images too during teleport? We have many servers and VMs but no NAS/SAN for performance (and money reasons).

Bernd

[Sasquatch]

GUI integration may or may not be included in 3.1. (if not, then later)

Will there be a feature that VBox can move/copy the VM-Images too during teleport? We have many servers and VMs but no NAS/SAN for performance (and money reasons).

Bernd

If you read the actual explanation of the feature here: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24424 you would see that it won't happen. They must use the same storage location, accessible by both Hosts in order to teleport the session. It's only the session, so only the actual memory is send to the other machine. As I said before, it's basics is the same as with Xen. You really don't want to send a 40 GB file over the network just to run the VM on a different Host. The actual downtime will be more than the downtime of the Host if it needs maintenance.

[Technologov]

Can it migrate across different host OSes ? Say Windows<->Linux or Linux32<->Linux64 ?

[klaus]

Yes, teleportation across platforms is possible.

[liangsuilong]

Teleportion looks very well. But I have some important question to ask.

Can I move a two-virtual-processor VM from a phyical machine which has VT to a physical machine which has no VT. Is it OK.? Will it crash when VM finish migration?

Another question is whether Virtualbox provide a GUI tool for teleportion. I know virt-manager in Fedora 12 can migrate the VM from one machine to another machine. You just need to click the mouse.

VirtualBox Web Console is quite suitable for remote management, especially for teleportion. Just hope it will be merged into VirtualBox mainline soon.

The settings of both source and target VMs have to match. That includes VT.

GUI integration may or may not be included in 3.1. (if not, then later)

Do you mean that teleportation must need VT support? Do we just migrate a VM between two hosts whch have VT support? Should The VM be enabled VT feature too?

Another sample, A VM running on a non-VT host teleports to a VT host. Is it OK? Or a VM disabled VT running on a VT host migrate to a non-VT host? Is it OK too?

Just hope the document about teleportation will be finished soon.

[sandervl]

Do you mean that teleportation must need VT support? Do we just migrate a VM between two hosts whch have VT support? Should The VM be enabled VT feature too?

Another sample, A VM running on a non-VT host teleports to a VT host. Is it OK? Or a VM disabled VT running on a VT host migrate to a non-VT host? Is it OK too?

Just hope the document about teleportation will be finished soon.

No, it's exactly like I said above: the VM settings must match. That means if the source uses VT-x/AMD-V, then the target must use it as well. If it doesn't, then the target can't use it either.

[liangsuilong]

Do you mean that teleportation must need VT support? Do we just migrate a VM between two hosts whch have VT support? Should The VM be enabled VT feature too?

Another sample, A VM running on a non-VT host teleports to a VT host. Is it OK? Or a VM disabled VT running on a VT host migrate to a non-VT host? Is it OK too?

Just hope the document about teleportation will be finished soon.

No, it's exactly like I said above: the VM settings must match. That means if the source uses VT-x/AMD-V, then the target must use it as well. If it doesn't, then the target can't use it either.

Thank you a lot.

[Bernd Hohmann]

Will there be a feature that VBox can move/copy the VM-Images too during teleport? We have many servers and VMs but no NAS/SAN for performance (and money reasons).

[...] You really don't want to send a 40 GB file over the network just to run the VM on a different Host. The actual downtime will be more than the downtime of the Host if it needs maintenance.

Teleporting the whole image has nothing to do with maintenance but with long term loadbalancing which is a typical piece of daily work for an VM admin (just moved 250GB Images around).

Bernd