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== Container Live Migration ==

To be actually able to migrate a container from one system to another at least Podman version 1.4.0 (June 2019) is required. With version 1.4.0 Podman is now able to export a complete checkpoint which can then be transferred:

 # podman run -d --name looper busybox /bin/sh -c \
          'i=0; while true; do echo $i; i=$(expr $i + 1); sleep 1; done'
 # podman container checkpoint -l --export=/tmp/chkpt.tar.gz
 # scp /tmp/chkpt.tar.gz <destination-host>:/tmp

Once the checkpoint archive has been transferred to the destination system the container can there be restored from the checkpoint archive:

 # podman container restore --import=/tmp/chkpt.tar.gz

Now the container continues to run from the same point where it was previously checkpointed on the source system.

From a checkpoint archive it is also possible to restore multiple copies of a container with different names:

 # podman container restore --import=/tmp/chkpt.tar.gz -n looper1
 # podman container restore --import=/tmp/chkpt.tar.gz -n looper2
 # podman container restore --import=/tmp/chkpt.tar.gz -n looper3

Each of these restored containers will be running from the point in time the container was checkpointed.

This requires at least CRIU 3.12 (3.13 for full SELinux support).

There are two recordings demonstrating Podman's container migration feature:

* https://asciinema.org/a/249918
* https://asciinema.org/a/249922