CentOS virt - Jun 2010 - (KVM) How can I migrate VM in a non shared storage environment?

Hi,

I have a server running CentOS 5.5 with KVM capabilities. I need to migrate
all the VMs to another server with the exact same hardware specs. The
problem is it is running on individual harddisks, not shared storage. What
is the best way to migrate to minimise downtime?

Thanks!

YongSan
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One way would be to boot the VMs with a product like Acronis or Ghost, and
create an image of the VM's drive(s).

 

Then create a new VM on the 2nd server that has nics with the same MAC
addresses as the old VM, and storage with the same sizes, and restore the
image there.

 

 

 

 

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On 24/06/10 7:17 AM, "Poh Yong Hwang" <yongsan at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have a server running CentOS 5.5 with KVM capabilities. I need to migrate
> all the VMs to another server with the exact same hardware specs. The
problem
> is it is running on individual harddisks, not shared storage. What is the
best
> way to migrate to minimise downtime?
I've had good success using dd and nc (netcat) to copy the contents of a
disk or disk image from one machine to another, and verifying the copy was
successful with a md5sum or sha1sum of both the original and copied disk.

Kelvin

+1 for dd + nc over ssh if necessary.

	This process can and probably will saturate your ethernet interface, so 
depending upon the amount of traffic the box pushes on the public 
interface the size of the partition and other factors, sometimes i add a 
crossover cable between unused interfaces on the 2 boxes and run the 
process over that interface, so it doesn't impact the running vms.

Cheers
-Chris

On 6/24/2010 9:00 AM, centos-virt-request at centos.org wrote:
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:52:57 -0400
> From: Kelvin Edmison<kelvin at kindsight.net>
> Subject: Re: [CentOS-virt] (KVM) How can I migrate VM in a non shared
> 	storage environment?
> To: Discussion about the virtualization on CentOS
> 	<centos-virt at centos.org>
> Message-ID:<C848E989.30D95%kelvin at kindsight.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"
>
>
>
>
> On 24/06/10 7:17 AM, "Poh Yong Hwang"<yongsan at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>> I have a server running CentOS 5.5 with KVM capabilities. I need to
migrate
>> all the VMs to another server with the exact same hardware specs. The
problem
>> is it is running on individual harddisks, not shared storage. What is
the best
>> way to migrate to minimise downtime?
>
> I've had good success using dd and nc (netcat) to copy the contents of
a
> disk or disk image from one machine to another, and verifying the copy was
> successful with a md5sum or sha1sum of both the original and copied disk.
>
> Kelvin
>
>
>
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