Re: [Xen-devel] Live Migration of Linux Desktop

["M.A. Williamson" <maw48@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I succeeded to do live migration of Linux desktop just now. It is just
> done with # xm migrate without any hack. It was easy but interesting
> trial.
> Are there somebody who have done same stuff? Or anybody has interest
> about this issue?
>
> Well, what I am thinking now is, what is the purpose of this. It is
> interesting to do, and would have many feture usage, but has no actual
> merit for now. I mean, it is even possible that I transfer my current
> desktop to the cambridge Univ in live, but any merit there? I am afraid
> that it would be just a geek toy currently. Tell me your ideas of usage.
For a desktop it doesn't seem so useful: if you're migrating your desktop 
system e.g. from home to work, whilst you travel by car you don't really 
need it to be a "live" migration. Stop and copy would work just as well - 
it'd be completed by the time you get there, and you won't notice the loss 
of interactivity whilst you're away from the console.
The live feature is most useful for datacentres: it gives you the ability 
to move server virtual machines to a less loaded host (load balancing 
across the server room) or use it to evacuate VMs from a host you're going 
to take down for maintenance. In this environment, the VMs may be serving 
your website, or part of your internal infrastructure, or you may be 
renting them out to customers, so you want them to remain live during the 
process - if you had to stop them in this circumstance, migration would be 
much less useful.
Really for "desktop" use, you'd also want some sort of disk technology to 
let you easily transfer just the modified bits of disk between systems, 
automatically. This would enable you to full migrate your "desktop" between 
home and work, whilst maintaining a cache of *most* disk state at both 
sites. It'd also be useful when transferring a virtual machine between your 
desktop and your laptop, for instance.
Cheers,
Mark

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