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Lab 3 - Live Migration Scenarios

Live migration enables you to move a virtual machine to another host while the machine and its applications are still running. You can activate automatic live migration for occasions when you perform hardware maintenance or if your hosts become non-operational, and your virtual machines will be migrated with no interruptions or delay. At the end of this lab you will have configured cluster policies and be able to balance your hosts' workloads.
This lab is intended for Track A. It assumes that you have successfully completed Lab 2 - Create Virtual Machines, and have at least two virtual machines running on your hosts.
Lab 3 - Objectives
This lab takes you through the tasks of optimizing your host clusters so you can activate virtual machine live migration when necessary. This lab should take you about 10 minutes.
Section 1, “Activate Live Migration” shows you how to live migrate virtual machines from host to host. (2 minutes)
Section 2, “Move Host into Maintenance” demonstrates virtual machine automatic live migration when a host is placed in maintenance mode. (3 minutes)
Section 3, “Define Cluster Policy” shows you how to define a cluster power saving policy, then demonstrates virtual machine live migration when a host is loaded beyond its threshold. (5 minutes)

1. Activate Live Migration

Now that you have several virtual machines running on each host, you can configure live migration. This provides a backup for the virtual machines - if they are running mission critical workloads, and cannot be powered off, you need to ensure that they must always have a host available to run on. Live migration allows you to move virtual machines to different hosts should the host they are running on experience scheduled or unscheduled downtime, without causing the virtual machine's operations to be suspended.
In this example, you will see how virtual machines are live migrated from one host to any of the available hosts in the same cluster.
To live migrate virtual machines
  1. Navigate to the Tree pane and click Expand All. Under Clusters, click the VMs icon. The list of available virtual machines is displayed in the Virtual Machines tab.
  2. Select one or more virtual machines and click Migrate. The Migrate Virtual Machines dialog displays.
    Live migrate a virtual machine to another host
    Figure 26. Live migrate a virtual machine to another host

    You can select a target host, or allow the system to automatically select one of the available hosts in the cluster. In this case, use the default option.
  3. Click OK. The virtual machines will live migrate to another host in the cluster.