Hyper-V Migration Method Decision Flow

To move virtual machines safely between Hyper-V hosts, administrators must choose the right transfer method based on their storage setup and network capacity. Standard live migration transfers running virtual machines (VMs) across hosts that share a common storage backend, meaning only the system memory and state move over the network. When hosts do not share storage, Shared Nothing Live Migration performs the transfer by moving both the virtual hard disks and the running memory state simultaneously over a network connection. Alternatively, the export and import methods allow administrators to save a VM's state to a file system and rebuild it on another host, though this method is typically slower and requires a temporary pause in VM operations.