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.
The following list shows the platforms that support live migration and the associated minimum system firmware version are:
UltraSPARC T2 and UltraSPARC T2 Plus platforms – Version 7.4.5
SPARC T3 and SPARC T4 platforms – Version 8.2.2.c
SPARC T5, SPARC M5, and SPARC M6 platforms – All system firmware versions
Fujitsu M10 platforms – All XCP versions
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 3.2 Release Notes .
System firmware versions 8.4, 9.1, and XCP2230 introduced support for EFI GPT disk labels. By default, virtual disks that are installed when running at least the Oracle Solaris 11.1 OS on those systems have an EFI GPT disk label. You cannot read this disk label on older versions of firmware (such as 9.0.x, 8.3, 7.x, or XCP2221). This situation precludes you from performing a live migration or a cold migration to a system that runs a system firmware version without EFI GPT support. Note that a cold migration also fails in this situation, which is different than the previous limitations.
To determine whether your virtual disk has an EFI GPT disk label, run the devinfo -i command on the raw device. The following examples show whether the virtual disk has an SMI VTOC or an EFI GPT disk label:
SMI VTOC disk label. When your virtual disk has an SMI VTOC, you can perform a migration to firmware regardless of whether it supports EFI.
This example indicates that the device has a VTOC label because the devinfo -i command reports device-specific information:
# devinfo -i /dev/rdsk/c2d0s2 /dev/rdsk/c2d0s2 0 0 73728 512 2
EFI GPT disk label. When your virtual disk has an EFI GPT disk label, you can perform a migration only to firmware that has EFI support.
This example indicates that the device has an EFI GPT disk label because the devinfo -i command reports an error:
# devinfo -i /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0 devinfo: /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0: This operation is not supported on EFI labeled devices