What is virtual machine migration?

Virtual machine (VM) migration is a key process in modernising IT infrastructure. It involves moving a virtual machine from one server or hypervisor to another. This process is essential to ensure operational continuity, optimise performance, and adopt more efficient technologies. Virtual machines are environments that simulate a complete system, including their own operating system, CPU, memory, network, and storage, running on physical hardware. That allows multiple VMs to coexist on the same hardware without interference.

Challenges of virtual machine migration

As adoption of hybrid cloud, containers, and technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) grows, companies face significant challenges when updating their infrastructure. Traditional virtualisation platforms may struggle to support new cloud-native architectures. Maintaining legacy infrastructure can be costly, more error-prone, and more exposed to security threats.

Technical and operational challenges

Manual deployment of virtual machines can lead to inconsistent configurations, long implementation times, and greater vulnerability risk. As companies manage multiple virtualisation platforms, complexity increases. Migrating to more modern, unified, or cloud-native platforms is therefore critical to overcome these hurdles.

Options for virtual machine migration

There are various solutions for VM migration, including integration with container technologies. Tools such as OpenShift Virtualization and VMware Tanzu allow virtual machines and containers to run in a unified environment, enabling gradual application modernisation without having to migrate everything at once.

Running virtual machines and containers side by side

With these platforms, IT teams can continue using legacy infrastructure while adopting new agile, scalable methodologies. In addition, platforms such as Proxmox VE and Oracle VM offer live migration, moving virtual machines without downtime and ensuring operational continuity.

Lower operating costs and improved productivity

Migrating virtual machines to modern environments significantly reduces operating costs. Infrastructure consolidation, adoption of hybrid cloud, and containerised platforms optimise resource use and reduce the need for additional physical servers.

Workflow optimisation and unified management

Platforms such as Kubernetes combined with KubeVirt allow both containers and virtual machines to be managed in a single environment, improving productivity and reducing deployment times. Unified platforms often also offer self-service options for developers, enabling more agile, efficient deployment without constant IT intervention.

Unified management and simpler operations

Migrating virtual machines to platforms that integrate container and VM management simplifies operations and infrastructure administration. Tools such as Ansible and Terraform automate deployments, ensuring environments remain consistent and secure.

Live migration and its impact on continuous availability

Live migration of virtual machines is essential to keep services available during maintenance or hardware upgrades. That ensures operations are not interrupted, maintaining high availability and operational continuity.

Advanced tools for large-scale virtual machine migration

Various tools such as VMware vSphere and Proxmox VE automate large-scale VM migration, simplifying reconfiguration of networks, storage, and compute resources. These solutions support ongoing management of virtual machines so they run without interruption while optimising available resources.