What is the process of moving a copy of a working virtual machine to a new location called?

The process of moving a copy of a working virtual machine to a new location is known as VM migration. This term is commonly used in virtualization environments to describe the transfer of a virtual machine from one physical host to another or to a different storage location. VM migration can facilitate load balancing across servers, reduce downtime, and improve resource utilization without the need for the virtual machine to be powered off or inoperative.

In virtualization terminology, cloning refers to creating an exact copy of a virtual machine, which is a different process than simply relocating an existing one. Instance relocation is not a widely recognized term in this context and does not specifically denote the movement of virtual machines. Node displacement usually refers to changes or movements related to the physical hardware nodes in a network rather than the virtual machines themselves. Therefore, VM migration is the precise term that accurately describes the moving of a virtual machine to a new location while retaining its operational state.