What does 'cold migration' refer to in VMware vSphere?

'Cold migration' refers to the process of moving a powered-off virtual machine from one host or datastore to another without any active operations occurring on it. This type of migration is typically used when a virtual machine is not in use, ensuring that there is no risk of data loss or corruption that could occur if the virtual machine were running during the move.

The process allows for maintenance, optimization of resource allocation, or reallocation of workloads without impacting the virtual machine's operation or performance. Since the virtual machine is powered off during cold migration, this type of migration is also simpler to execute, as no live data transactions are occurring that need to be managed or preserved.