cloud-hypervisor/docs/live_migration.md

Live Migration

This document gives two examples of how to use the live migration support in Cloud Hypervisor:

1. local migration - migrating between two VMs running on the same machine;
2. nested-vm migration - migrating between two nested VMs whose host VMs are running on the same machine.

Local Migration (Suitable for Live Upgrade of VMM)

Launch the source VM (on the host machine):

$ target/release/cloud-hypervisor
    --kernel ~/workloads/vmlinux \
    --disk path=~/workloads/focal.raw \
    --cpus boot=1 --memory size=1G,shared=on \
    --cmdline "root=/dev/vda1 console=ttyS0"  \
    --serial tty --console off --api-socket /tmp/api1

Launch the destination VM from the same directory (on the host machine):

$ target/release/cloud-hypervisor --api-socket /tmp/api2

Get ready for receiving migration for the destination VM (on the host machine):

$ target/release/ch-remote --api-socket /tmp/api2 receive-migration unix:/tmp/sock

Start to send migration for the source VM (on the host machine):

$ target/release/ch-remote --api-socket /tmp/api1 send-migration --local unix:/tmp/sock

When the above commands completed, the source VM should be successfully migrated to the destination VM. Now the destination VM is running while the source VM is terminated gracefully.

Nested-VM Migration

Launch VM 1 (on the host machine) with an extra virtio-blk device for exposing a guest image for the nested source VM:

Note: the example below also attached an additional virtio-blk device with a dummy image for testing purpose (which is optional).

$ head -c 1M < /dev/urandom > tmp.img # create a dummy image for testing
$ sudo /target/release/cloud-hypervisor \
        --serial tty --console off \
        --cpus boot=1 --memory size=512M \
        --kernel vmlinux \
        --cmdline "root=/dev/vda1 console=ttyS0"  \
        --disk path=focal-1.raw path=focal-nested.raw --disk path=tmp.img\
        --net ip=192.168.101.1

Launch VM 2 (on the host machine) with an extra virtio-blk device for exposing the same guest image for the nested destination VM:

$ sudo /target/release/cloud-hypervisor \
        --serial tty --console off \
        --cpus boot=1 --memory size=512M \
        --kernel vmlinux \
        --cmdline "root=/dev/vda1 console=ttyS0"  \
        --disk path=focal-2.raw path=focal-nested.raw --disk path=tmp.img\
        --net ip=192.168.102.1

Launch the nested source VM (inside the guest OS of the VM 1) :

vm-1:~$ sudo ./cloud-hypervisor \
        --serial tty --console off \
        --memory size=128M \
        --kernel vmlinux \
        --cmdline "console=ttyS0 root=/dev/vda1" \
        --disk path=/dev/vdb --disk path=/dev/vdc \
        --api-socket /tmp/api1 \
        --net ip=192.168.100.1
vm-1:~$ # setup the guest network if needed
vm-1:~$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.101.2/24 dev ens4
vm-1:~$ sudo ip link set up dev ens4
vm-1:~$ sudo ip r add default via 192.168.101.1

Optional: Run the guest workload below (on the guest OS of the nested source VM), which performs intensive virtio-blk operations. Now the console of the nested source VM should repeatedly print "equal", and our goal is migrating this VM and the running workload without interruption.

#/bin/bash

# On the guest OS of the nested source VM

input="/dev/vdb"
result=$(md5sum $input)
tmp=$(md5sum $input)

while  [[ "$result" == "$tmp" ]]
do
    echo "equal"
    tmp=$(md5sum $input)
done

echo "not equal"
echo "result = $result"
echo "tmp = $tmp"

Launch the nested destination VM (inside the guest OS of the VM 2):

vm-2:~$ sudo ./cloud-hypervisor --api-socket /tmp/api2
vm-2:~$ # setup the guest network with the following commands if needed
vm-2:~$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.102.2/24 dev ens4
vm-2:~$ sudo ip link set up dev ens4
vm-2:~$ sudo ip r add default via 192.168.102.1
vm-2:~$ ping 192.168.101.2 # This should succeed

Note: If the above ping failed, please check the iptables rule on the host machine, e.g. whether the policy for the FORWARD chain is set to DROP (which is the default setting configured by Docker).

Get ready for receiving migration for the nested destination VM (inside the guest OS of the VM 2):

vm-2:~$ sudo ./ch-remote --api-socket /tmp/api2 receive-migration unix:/tmp/sock2
vm-2:~$ sudo socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr UNIX-CLIENT:/tmp/sock2

Start to send migration for the nested source VM (inside the guest OS of the VM 1):

vm-1:~$ sudo socat UNIX-LISTEN:/tmp/sock1,reuseaddr TCP:192.168.102.2:6000
vm-1:~$ sudo ./ch-remote --api-socket /tmp/api1 send-migration unix:/tmp/sock1

When the above commands completed, the source VM should be successfully migrated to the destination VM without interrupting our testing guest workload. Now the destination VM is running the testing guest workload while the source VM is terminated gracefully.