Is live migration supported?
As of 2026, here is how live migration works for your rented infrastructure:
When Oracle needs to perform maintenance on a physical host (like patching the host OS or fixing a hardware component), the Live Migration engine takes over:
The Process: OCI copies the running state of your Virtual Machine—including its memory, CPU registers, and network state—to a healthy physical host in the background.
The "Cutover": Once the new host is synced, there is a tiny pause (usually less than 30 milliseconds) as the system switches over.
The Result: Your users and applications generally never notice the move. Your SSH sessions stay active, and your database stays connected.
While live migration is the default for most standard workloads, it isn't available for every single "rental" type:
| Instance Type | Live Migration Support | Maintenance Action |
| Standard VM Shapes | Full Support | Transparent move (No downtime) |
| Dense I/O VMs | Limited / No | Reboot Migration (to preserve local NVMe) |
| Bare Metal Servers | No | Reboot Migration or Manual move |
| GPU / HPC Shapes | No | Requires a reboot due to hardware pinning |
If your instance doesn't support live migration (like a Bare Metal server), OCI uses Reboot Migration:
Notification: You’ll receive a notice (usually 14 days in advance) that maintenance is coming.
The Action: You can proactively reboot the server yourself at a time that suits you. When you click "Reboot," OCI automatically moves the server to a healthy physical host.
The "Safety Net": If you forget to reboot, OCI will do it for you automatically when the maintenance window hits.
You can actually control how OCI handles your servers during these events. In the Compute Instance Details page, under Maintenance, you can choose:
Use Live Migration if Possible: (Default) Oracle will move the VM silently without bothering you.
Opt-out / Notify Me: If your app is extremely sensitive to that 30ms pause, you can ask for a notification so you can manually failover your traffic before a migration occurs.
| Feature | Live Migration | Reboot Migration |
| Downtime | ~30 Milliseconds | 2–5 Minutes |
| IP Addresses | Preserved | Preserved |
| App State | Maintained | Lost (App must restart) |
| Local Disk | Maintained | Deleted (for NVMe shapes) |
If you have Shielded Instances enabled (with TPM and Measured Boot), live migration is still supported. OCI’s migration engine is cryptographically aware, meaning it can securely transfer the "Trusted" state of your TPM from one physical chip to another without breaking the chain of trust.