What does the term 'vMotion' refer to in VMware?

The term 'vMotion' in VMware specifically refers to the capability of moving virtual machines (VMs) between physical hosts within a cluster without incurring any downtime. This feature is essential for load balancing, maintenance operations, and achieving high availability in virtualized environments.

When vMotion is utilized, it allows for seamless migration by transferring the active memory and state of a VM across hosts while ensuring that the VM remains operational and accessible to users during the process. This enhances the overall resource management and availability of applications running in a virtualized environment.

This functionality is particularly valuable in environments where uptime is critical, as it avoids any service interruption typically associated with traditional VM migration methods, thus making it a core feature of VMware's virtualization offerings.