What is VM migration?

Migrating a virtual machine means moving a virtual machine from one host or datastore to another host or datastore. vSphere supports a couple of VM migration types that can help you to get better resource utilization across multiple physical hosts and shift workloads between hosts in order to balance the resource utilization. The available migration types are:

• Cold – migrates a powered-off VM.
• Suspended – migrates a suspended VM.
• vSphere vMotion – migrates a powered-on VM.
• vSphere Storage vMotion – migrates a powered-on VM’s files to another datastore.