The Efficacy of Live Virtual Machine Migrations Over the Internet

This paper describes a technique to enable live migration of virtual machines over the Internet. The method assumes the network supports Mobile IPv6 and that participating host devices support Xen 3.1. Unlike live migration schemes proposed by other researchers, virtual networks are not required. We describe our work in progress on developing a system that utilizes Mobile IPv6 to enable constant network connectivity through the migration. We identify the sources of delay associated with the live migration and conclude that as long as migrations occur relatively infrequently, live migration over the Internet is practical.