Offline Migrate or move a virtual machine between two KVM servers without shared storage

How to offline migrate or move a virtual machine between two KVM servers without shared storage

Prerequisites: virsh pool-define-as, virsh pool-autostart and virsh pool-start

Overview: virsh dumpxml and virsh define

1. Stop you VMs: virsh shutdown VM_MACHINE and virsh autostart VM_MACHINE --disable

2. Dump XML configuration: virsh dumpxml VM_MACHINE > VM_MACHINE_dump.xml

3. cp files to new server image directory: /var/lib/libvirt/images or virsh vol-list POOL_NAME --details (verify files owner and group)

4. Depending on your Origin and destination host you may need to edit xml file and modify network interface and remove MAC address. (See MacVTap)

5. Create machine but do not start it: virsh define VM_MACHINE_dump.xml (virsh list --all)

6. Configure autostart: virsh autostart VM_MACHINE

7. Start Machine: virsh start VM_MACHINE

See also

• virsh: Storage information, Connecting, Operations, Memory, Snapshots, Networking, CPU, release notes, virsh nodedev-list
• libvirt qemu support for migration of VMs with non-shared storage over TLS (v4.4.0 2018-06-04)
• KVM, Installation, QEMU, virsh, virtinst, libguestfs-tools, libvirt, qemu, Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), MacVTap, Virtio, oVirt, KVM services, KVM networking, KVM graphics, CPU, KVM on ARM

https://serverfault.com/questions/434064/correct-way-to-move-kvm-vm