Introduction to teleporting (aka Live Migration)

[sandervl]

Documentation for the teleporting feature has not yet been written for VirtualBox 3.1.0 Beta 1. Here is a small introduction to cover the basics.

Prerequisites for teleporting a VM from one machine (the source machine) to another machine (the target machine):

• fairly identical CPUs; cross CPU brand teleporting will be enabled later on
• identical VMs on both machines; if you use disk images, then they must be located on a shared network location

On the target machine you must configure the VM as the teleport target with VBoxManage:
- VBoxManage modifyvm "Target VM name" --teleporterenabled on -- teleporterport port_nr

You can initiate the teleport with VBoxManage as well: (start the VM first)
- VBoxManage controlvm "Source VM name" teleport --hostname host_name_or_IP --port port_nr

Let's start with a very basic sample:

• Create the source VM called "Linux Source" without any hard disk image and with an attached bootable ISO image (e.g. Damn Small Linux)
• Create the target VM called "Linux Target" with the same settings (bootable ISO image attached as well)

Start the source VM with the VirtualBox GUI:
- VirtualBox -startvm "Linux Source"

Enable teleporting and start the target VM:
- VBoxManage modifyvm "Linux Target" --teleporterenabled on --teleporterport 6000
- VirtualBox -startvm "Linux Target"

To initiate teleporting do the following:
- VBoxManage controlvm "Linux Source" teleport --hostname localhost --port 6000

Now (quickly) see the source VM migrate to the target VM.

To teleport a VM between two computers you just exchange localhost for the IP or name of the target machine.