A hypervisor on a destination host receives a request to migrate a virtual machine (VM) from a source host to the destination host and determines a total amount of memory associated with the VM on the source host. The hypervisor on the destination host allocates one or more memory pages in a page table on the destination host to satisfy the total amount of memory associated with the VM on the source host, where the one or more memory pages are to be associated with the VM on the destination host. Responsive to determining that the one or more memory pages have been allocated on the destination host, the hypervisor on the destination host initiates migration of the VM from the source host to the destination host.