This application provides a virtual machine status probe method and a device, to improve reliability of probing whether a virtual machine is faulty in the source device, thereby effectively avoiding occurrence of a virtual machine split brain. The method includes: obtaining an invocation message, where the invocation message is used to probe a first virtual machine; obtaining an identifier of the first virtual machine; invoking a probe script based on the invocation message, and transferring the identifier of the first virtual machine to the probe script; sending a probe packet by running the probe script, where the probe packet is used to probe a status of the first virtual machine in the source device, and the probe packet includes the identifier of the first virtual machine; receiving feedback information sent by the source device, where the feedback information is used to indicate the status of the first virtual machine; and determining, based on the feedback information, whether to recreate the first virtual machine in the destination device.