Live migration operator runbook

Run live migration as a gated change. Keep source ownership until destination state and application health are proven.

Start and watch

virsh migrate --live --persistent --undefinesource \
  guest01 qemu+ssh://target.example/system

In a second session:

virsh domjobinfo guest01
virsh domjobabort guest01

Choose flags based on the preflight. --copy-storage-all changes bandwidth, duration, and recovery characteristics and must not be added casually.

Completion proof

virsh -c qemu+ssh://target.example/system domstate guest01 --reason
virsh -c qemu+ssh://target.example/system domiflist guest01
virsh list --all

Then validate application health, monitoring, backup ownership, and the absence of a running source copy.

Abort boundary

Abort while source remains authoritative if convergence stalls or destination prerequisites fail. Once switchover completes, recovery is a new incident state, not simply a command reversal.