Other networks---Seamless live migration of virtual machines over the MAN/WAN
Franco Travostino · 2006
The "VM Turntable" demonstrator at SC05 and SC06 pioneers the integration of Virtual Machines (VMs) with deterministic "lightpath" network services (www.nortel.com/drac) across metro and wide area networks. The integration provides for a new stage of virtualization, one for which computation is no longer localized within a data center but rather can be migrated across geographical distances, with negligible downtime, transparently to running applications and external clients.A noteworthy data point indicates that a live VM can be migrated between Amsterdam, NL and San Diego, USA with just 1 to 2 seconds of application downtime. When compared to intra-LAN local migrations, downtime is only about 5-10 times greater despite 1,000 times higher round-trip-times. These outcomes realize significant value propositions in the areas of data affinity, load balancing, power-aware computing, business continuance, and disaster recovery.