The following sections describe restrictions for domain migration. The Logical Domains Manager software and the system firmware versions must be compatible to permit migrations. Also, you must meet certain CPU requirements to ensure a successful domain migration.
Live migration is not qualified and supported on all combinations of the source and target platforms and system firmware versions. For those combinations that cannot perform a live migration, you can perform a cold migration instead.
This section describes version restrictions for performing live migrations.
Logical Domains Manager version. You can perform a live migration in either direction when one system runs the latest version of the Logical Domains Manager and the other system runs at least the immediately preceding version of the Logical Domains Manager.
Oracle Solaris OS version. You can perform a live migration of a guest domain that runs at least the Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 OS. You cannot perform a live migration of a guest domain that runs the Oracle Solaris 10 10/09 OS or earlier Oracle Solaris OS versions. You can still boot these older Oracle Solaris OS versions and perform cold migrations of such domains.
System firmware version. In general, you can perform a live migration between two systems when both the source and target machines support the appropriate minimum system firmware versions. See Minimum System Firmware Versions in Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.3 Installation Guide .
However, some specific platform and firmware combinations do not support live migration. Attempting to perform the live migration of a domain from a system that runs at least system firmware version 8.4 or XCP2210 to a system that runs an older system firmware version fails. The failure occurs because of a hypervisor API mismatch between the newer and older system firmware versions. In this instance, the following message is issued:
primary# ldm migrate ldg1 root@target-name Target Password: Domain ldg1 is using features of the system firmware that are not supported in the version of the firmware running on the target machine. Domain Migration of LDom ldg1 failed
Note that you can perform the live migration of a domain from a system that runs system firmware version 8.3 to a system that runs at least system firmware version 8.4 unless the target machine is a SPARC M5-32 system. For more information, see Domain Migrations From SPARC T4 Systems That Run System Firmware 8.3 to SPARC T5, SPARC M5, or SPARC M6 Systems Are Erroneously Permitted in Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.3 Release Notes .
You cannot perform live migration operations between an UltraSPARC T2, UltraSPARC T2 Plus, or SPARC T3 system and a SPARC T5, SPARC M5, or SPARC M6 system.
If the domain to be migrated is running an Oracle Solaris OS version older than the Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 OS, you might see the following message during the migration:
Domain domain-name is not running an operating system that is compatible with the latest migration functionality.
The following CPU requirements and restrictions apply when you run an OS prior to the Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 OS:
Full cores must be allocated to the migrated domain. If the number of threads in the domain to be migrated is less than a full core, the extra threads are unavailable to any domain until after the migrated domain is rebooted.
After a migration, CPU dynamic reconfiguration (DR) is disabled for the migrated domain until it has been rebooted. At that time, you can use CPU DR on the migrated domain.
The target machine must have enough free full cores to provide the number of threads that are required for the migrated domain. After the migration, if a full core is only partially used by the migrated domain, any extra threads are unavailable to any domain until after the migrated domain is rebooted.
These restrictions also apply when you attempt to migrate a domain that is running in OpenBoot or in the kernel debugger. See Migrating a Domain From the OpenBoot PROM or a Domain That Is Running in the Kernel Debugger.
Take care when performing migrations of domains that have the perf-counters property value set.
Before you perform the migration of a domain that has the perf-counters property value set to global, ensure that no other domain on the target machine has the perf-counters property set to global.
During a migration operation, the perf-counters property is treated differently based on whether the performance access capability is available on the source machine, the target machine, or both.
The perf-counters property value is treated as follows:
Source machine only. The perf-counters property value is not propagated to the target machine.
Target machine only. The perf-counters property value on the machine to be migrated is updated to be equivalent to perf-counters=.
Source and target machines. The perf-counters property value is propogated from the domain to be migrated to the migrated domain on the target machine.
For more information about the perf-counters property, see Using Perf-Counter Properties and the ldm(1M) man page.