User`s guide

Operations on Virtual Machines and Containers 52
Standard Migration
The standard migration procedure allows you to move stopped, paused, suspended, and running
virtual machines and Containers. Migrating a stopped, paused, or suspended virtual machine and
Container includes copying all virtual machine and Container-related files from one Parallels
server to another and does not differ from copying a number of files from one server to another
over the network. In its turn, the migration procedure of a running virtual machine and
Container is a bit more complicated and can be described as follows:
1 After initiating the migration process, all virtual machine and Container data are copied to
the destination server. During this time, the virtual machine and Container on the source
server continues running.
2 The virtual machine and Container on the source server is stopped.
3 The virtual machine and Container data copied to the destination server are compared with
those on the source server, and if any files were changed during the first migration step, they
are copied to the destination server again and rewrite the outdated versions.
4 The virtual machine and Container on the destination server is started.
There is a short downtime needed to stop the virtual machine and Container on the source
server, copy the virtual machine and Container data changes to the destination server, and start
the virtual machine and Container on the destination server. However, this time is very short and
almost unnoticeable to users.
Note: Before the migration, it might be necessary to detach the Container from its caches. For
more information on cached files, see the Cleaning Up Containers subsection (p. 99).
Migrating a Container
The following session moves Container 101 from the current Parallels server to a new one
named ts7.test.com:
# pmigrate c 101 c root:[e-mail]/101
[e-mail]'s password:
vzmsrc: Connection to destination server (ts7.test.com) is successfully
established
...
Successfully completed
The c option in the command above tells pmigrate that you are moving a Container to a
Container. If you do not indicate the credentials to log in to the destination server, you will need
to do so during the migration.
Important! For the command to be successful, a direct SSH connection (on port 22) should be
allowed between the source and destination servers.
By default, after the migration process is completed, the Container private area and
configuration file are renamed on the source server by receiving the .migrated suffix.
However, if you wish the Container private area on the source server to be removed after the
successful Container migration, you can override the default pmigrate behavior by changing
the value of the REMOVEMIGRATED variable in the Parallels Server Bare Metal global
configuration file (/etc/vz/vz.conf) to yes or by using the –r yes switch with the
pmigrate command.