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Move VPS "file" to other host?
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Move VPS "file" to other host?

dirkdirk Member
edited September 2011 in General

I'm a user of VMWare Workstation since v1. For me that was my first expierence with virtualisation. The great thing of it was/is that you can create a guest on system_1 and use that same guest on system_2. Basicly you just copy the file over to the other system. (only exception I know is that you can't run a 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host) For me this makes VMWare great to use.
Can the same be done with VPSes, using OpenVZ and/or XEN? Or is the virtualisation not going that far?

Comments

  • tuxtux Member
    edited September 2011

    dirk said: only exception I know is that you can run a 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host

    You can't run 64 bit guest on 32 bit host but you can run 32 bit guest on 64 bit host.

  • I think you are referring to snapshots to create your additional instances, and there is a similar way with OpenVZ and Xen by using templates, not quite as simple as a snapshot, but equally quick for deployment.

  • dirkdirk Member
    edited September 2011

    @tux: that was a typo I wanted indeed to say "can't run".... -> changed the original post to reflect that too.....

    @miTgiB: I'm not refering to snapshots, but just as with VMWare WS to the actual complete guest system. Basicly you could see the question as: if I have a VPS with provider_1, can I then request the "file" to the provider and install the exact same file on provider_2 (knowing that the IP address should at least be changed)?
    (the IP issue was until now never a problem for me with VMWare as I always used DHCP for it :-))

  • miTgiBmiTgiB Member
    edited September 2011

    dirk said: can I then request the "file" to the provider and install the exact same file on provider_2

    You can technically do this, yes, now get two providers to get along long enough to do it is a whole new can of worms. Another option since few get along in the industry is to rsync the filesystem to the new VPS, install the base OS that is the same as what is on the origin, then rsync and change what's needed.

  • Yes with VMWare Workstation and even VirtualBox, you can pretty much just copy the disk image + the configuration file, and it would boot up on a different host with exactly the same setting. Actually it is a bit more complicated because of network setups...

    For OpenVZ I believe you could just tar up your VE under /vz/ and then move it to a different server. Provided the architecture is the same it should still work after fiddling with the network.

    Most hypervisor/hardware VM would use LVM or a disk partition (for performance reason) so it won't be as trivial as copying a file I think.

  • LowEndAdmin said: Most hypervisor/hardware VM would use LVM or a disk partition (for performance reason) so it won't be as trivial as copying a file I think.

    With a util suck as Clonezilla it probably wouldn't be too bad though.

  • Possible: Yes

    Going to happen, esp for a VPS that is only charging you a few $$ a month anyway: Almost certainly no.

  • reinstalling same OS on the other host is much easier and faster. and copying /etc, /home and some files from /var should be easy enough.

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