What does 'teleport' mean?

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milan
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Mar 2016, 23:59

What does 'teleport' mean?

Post by milan »

Hi everyone,

I'm discovering the functionality of VirtualBox API and I have found teleport method in the IConsole class. I'm a ittle bit confused from its description as there are no details what the method actually does. Originally I thought that it moves the whole virtual machine over network to the desired host machine. But then I reconsidered this thought and asked myself why this method would be part of IConsole object if it moves a machine and another idea came to my head.
I believe that when one uses this method, then a new ISession object is created on the remote machine with hostname and port passed in parameters and the user is able to control the virtualbox on this remote machine.
Would you kindly explain what it actually does?
Thank you

Milan

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VirtualBox version - 5.0.16
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noteirak
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Re: What does 'teleport' mean?

Post by noteirak »

Teleporting is explained in more details in section 7.2 of the User Manual.
Basically: you move the VM RAM from one host to another to keep it running with a small freeze delay, keeping the same storage backend.
I'll refrain to go into more details here unless you have specific questions after having read the user manual. This is the VirtualBox equivalent of VMware vMotion if you're familiar with it.

In terms of API, you will need to have access to both hosts to perform the operation and this does not involve moving the storage - only the RAM content is moved accross hosts, which explain why you must have the exact same VM config on either side. Also, having the same CPU is usually a good idea.
You need to use the IConsole object because the VMs are already running when you initialize the teleport and also because IConsole would be the only object capable of using the feature using a Shared lock.
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