Migration

In many situations, you need to migrate a VM from one physical server to another. Hardware failures, capacity limitations, and maintenance are all reasons to relocate a VM. You can automate the move of a VM between systems in a number of ways. Common methods include importing/exporting (discussed in Chapter 6, “Migrating Virtual Machines”), using failover clustering (covered in Chapter 8, “High Availability),” performing a simple file copy, or undertaking a virtual to virtual (V2V) migration. SCVMM 2008 and SCVMM 2008 R2 support the automation of VM migration better than any other solution; we’ll cover it in Chapter 11.

Simple File Copy

VM information lives in files. Why not copy or move the files that define a VM from one host to another? Finding all the necessary files and ensuring they’re properly migrated can be a complicated task. Guaranteeing the VM is in a movable state (off or saved) is important, as is handling host-specific dependencies such as the migration of virtual network resources and security settings.