VMware Fault Tolerance migration transition states

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article discusses the VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) migration transition states as seen in the logs for FT, and what the states mean.

Environment

VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable

Resolution

Migration Transition States - Primary

Base state. No migration currently in progress.
MIGRATE_VMX_NONE - state 0

VMX has received a MIGRATE_TO message. Waiting for the start message along with the world ID of the destination.
MIGRATE_TO_VMX_READY – state 1

VMX has received a MIGRATE_START message. Precopying data to destination.
MIGRATE_TO_VMX_PRECOPY – state 2

Precopy done. Saving checkpoint.
MIGRATE_TO_VMX_CHECKPT – state 3

Done saving checkpoint. Waiting for acknowledgement from the destination that the VMX started. Until the acknowledgement is received, the migration may still fail back to the source.
MIGRATE_TO_VMX_WAIT_HANDSHAKE – state 4

Migration succeeded or failed. On success, the VMX process needs to power down and cleanup.

On failure, the virtual machine continues running and is ready for the next migration operation after this state passes.
MIGRATE_TO_VMX_FINISHED – state 5

Migration Transition States - Secondary

Note: State 6 is unused.

Base state. No migration currently in progress.
MIGRATE_VMX_NONE - state 0

VMX has received a MIGRATE_FROM message. Getting ready to receive the virtual machine.
MIGRATE_FROM_VMX_INIT – state 7

VMX is ready and waiting for source to send virtual machine data.
MIGRATE_FROM_VMX_WAITING – state 8

Both memory and checkpoint data is being copied to destination.
MIGRATE_FROM_VMX_PRECOPY – state 9

Data was precopied. Restoring checkpoint.
MIGRATE_FROM_VMX_CHECKPT – state 10

Migration succeeded or failed. On success, VMX process runs migrated virtual machine. After the state passes, VMX is ready for the next migration operation.

On failure, the virtual machine powers down and performs a clean up.
MIGRATE_FROM_VMX_FINISHED – state 11