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any files were changed during the first migration step, they are copied to the destination server again and rewrite the outdated versions.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 .

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:1qasdeqw3@ts7.test.com/101

root@ts7.test.com'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.

Migrating a Virtual Machine

In its turn, to migrate a virtual machine from the source server to ts7.test.com , you need just to specify v instead of c and the name of the resulting virtual machine instead of Container ID 101:

# pmigrate v MyVM v ts7.test.com/MyVM

Migrate the VM MyVM to test.com

root@ts7.test.com's password:

Operation progress 100%

The VM has been successfully migrated.

This command moves the MyVM virtual machine from the local server to the destination server ts7.test.com .

For virtual machines, pmigrate also supports the migration from a remote Parallels server to the local one:

# pmigrate v ts7.test.com/MyVM v localhost

root@ts7.test.com's password:

Migrate the VM MyVM to localhost

Operation progress 100%

The VM has been successfully migrated.

This command move the MyVM virtual machine from the ts7.test.com server to the local server.

Note : For more information on options that you can pass to pmigrate , refer to the Parallels Command Line Reference .