A Survey on Virtual Machine Migration

issues,Techniques and challenges

I. I NTRODUCTION b) Load balancing:: VM migration ensures that all

servers in a data center run evenly, improving the quality of
This paper, titled “A Survey on Virtual Machine Migration: service (QoS) and extending the lifespan of servers. It also
Challenges, Techniques, and Open Issues”, provides prevents energy waste from underloaded servers.
a comprehensive overview of Virtual Machine (VM)
migration, a cornerstone technology for the majority of cloud c) Server consolidation:: VM migration helps in
management tasks. consolidating servers for energy efficiency and reduced
network traffic. It ensures VMs are properly organized and
The paper begins by discussing the importance of VM located for optimal performance.
migration in efficiently managing hardware resources and
VMs in a data center. This is crucial for cloud providers d) Across-site management:: Cloud providers with
to both lower economical cost and ensure a high service multiple sites can improve QoS and reduce costs by
quality1. VM migration, by freeing a VM from the underlying moving compute resources closer to clients (Follow the sun)
hardware, brings numerous benefits to cloud providers and or to data centers with lower cooling costs (Follow the moon).
users.
e) Hybrid cloud:: In a hybrid cloud setup, users can
The authors classify VM migration schemes from three offload tasks to a public cloud during peak workloads,
perspectives: manner, distance, and granularity. They provide offering cost-effectiveness and elasticity.
a simple review of non-live migration studies, and then
comprehensively survey those on live migration based on f) Cloud federation:: Cloud providers can cooperate
the three main challenges it faces: memory data migration, to compensate for individual data center deficiencies. This
storage data migration, and network connection continuity. is beneficial in academia, where large volumes of data can
be processed by moving the computation environment to the
The paper also elaborates on the works on quantitative data location.
analysis of VM migration performance1. With the
development and evolution of cloud computing, user g) Breaking vendor lock-in issue:: VM migration
mobility becomes an important motivation for live VM allows users to move between data centers, reducing the risk
migration in some scenarios (e.g., fog computing). Thus, the of being locked in by a single cloud vendor.
studies regarding linking VM migration to user mobility are
summarized as well. h) Reaction to user mobility:: To maintain Service
Level Agreements (SLA), cloud providers may need to
Finally, the paper concludes by listing the open issues migrate VMs to a data center closer to the user. This is
which are waiting for solutions or further optimizations particularly important in fog computing scenarios where each
on live VM migration1. This survey serves as a valuable edge cloud data center covers a small region of users.
resource for researchers and practitioners in the field of cloud
computing and virtualization.
B. VM Migration
a) Memory Data Migration:: This involves transferring
II. BASIC K NOWLEDGE the active memory of a virtual machine (VM) from one
physical host to another. It’s crucial for maintaining
A. Support By Cloud Management
uninterrupted service during migrations.
a) Zero-downtime hardware maintenance:: VM
migration allows for hardware maintenance or upgrades b) Storage Data Migration:: Refers to moving the
without any downtime. Servers can be replaced by migrating persistent storage (like disks or databases) of a VM. It ensures
VMs out and back in after replacement. data availability and consistency post-migration.
 c) Network Connectivity Continuity:: Ensures that the network transfer speed, the migration might not converge,
the VM maintains its network connections and IP address leading to large downtime or network traffic.
continuity, so there’s no disruption in network services to the
clients. b) Post-Copy: This method first stops the VM on the
source host, then copies the necessary data to start the VM
VM Migration is classified into Live,Non- on the destination host. The rest of the memory data is
live,LAN,WAN,Single,Multiple migrations etc. transferred afterwards. Post-copy only copies memory pages
once, so the total migration time is predictable. However,
it risks data loss if the migration fails halfway, because
III. L IVE M IGRATION AND N ON L IVE M IGRATION
the latest data of the VM is split between the source and
A. Non Live Migration destination hosts.
This type of transition is appropriate for migration induced
by user mobility. This kind of migration happens when a c) Hybrid-Copy: This method combines pre-copy and
user moves from one location to another. In this scenario, post-copy. It starts with a limited round of pre-copy, then
no network connections are maintained open during the switches to post-copy for the remaining data. This approach
migration. All the current state, including the running state, reduces network traffic and minimizes the chance of page
CPU, and memory content, are stored in the Network File faults at the destination site, which helps to reduce service
System (NFS) and migrated to a new server to resume degradation. However, like post-copy, it has weak robustness
operations from there. Here, we need to manage all three due to the risk of data loss if the migration fails.
aspects: network connectivity, storage data migration, and
memory data migration.
V. STORAGE DATA MIGRATION
B. Live Migration
Storage data migration can be categorized into three main
In this type of migration, a VM migrates from one server
types. The first is pre-storage migration, where the storage is
to another within its own network for proper load balancing.
moved before the main memory. The second is post-storage
During this migration, network connections remain open,
migration, which occurs after the main memory has been
ensuring no network delay.
transferred. The third type is hybrid storage migration,
where both the main memory and storage are migrated
Based on distance, live migration can be categorized as simultaneously. When combining these methods, various
LAN or WAN type. In LAN migration, both the source combinations can occur, such as migrating both storage and
and destination servers share a common storage data unit, memory before or after each other, or using a hybrid approach
eliminating the need for storage data migration. Since they for one or both.
are on the same subnet, network connectivity is not a concern.
However, memory data migration is still necessary.

In WAN migration, the source and destination have VI. NETWORK CONNECTION CONTINUITY
different storage units, necessitating storage data migration.
As the source and destination are in different data centers, In order to ensure network connectivity here are some
proper network connectivity must be ensured. This type of techniques
migration involves handling memory, storage, and network
migration. a) Layer-2 Solution: Here it works on the principle
of extension of LAN service. Our idea is to extend size of
LAN to cover multiple data centers. CISCO implemented
IV. M EMORY DATA M IGRATION this idea of LAN extension by following a techniques called
There are three pattern for memory migrations:- OTV(Overlay Transport Virtualization)
Precopy,Postcopy and Hybrid copy
b) Layer-3 Solution: Here whenever user migrate from
a) Pre-Copy: This method first copies the original one location to another to ensure network connectivity IP
memory data to the destination server, then transfers any new Tunneling is used. Before migration of VM a tunnel is
changes in rounds. It stops when certain conditions are met, created between source and destination server. Whenever
like a certain number of rounds, or when the remaining data VM runs on destination server it gets new IP address .The
is below a certain size. Pre-copy is robust and widely used DNS entry is taken care by COA- Care of [Link] all
because it always keeps a complete set of data at the source the packets sent to VM are forwarded to the destination via
site. However, it can lead to high network overhead and long [Link] migration is done by foreign agent and home agent.
migration time. If the rate of memory changes is faster than
 c) Layer-4 Solution: Here whenever a VM migrate from
source to destination it get’s a new IP address. Here we
implement a migrate option .Here from destination server TCP
makes a new connection with client by sending new IP address
along with control bit(SYN=1)