If you are like me and have mainly worked in small businesses then you may not have had the chance to setup a failover clustering environment. We've read all about it and how wonderful it is to have it, but unfortunately a lot of the times, the money is spent on more important things like staff salary and trying to keep the business afloat.
Well, I am happy to say with the client I am working for right now, they have a very good failover clustering Hyper-V environment running on top of Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacentre attached to an EMC VNX 5300 SAN. The guy who set it up unfortunately no longer works there.
To cut a long story short, I needed to move a VM to another node (another host in the cluster).
With failover clustering being used for Hyper-V you need to run the Failover Cluster Manager to manage the VMs. You don't use the Hyper-V Manager, even though you can start it up and see the virtual machines. You can change some settings with Hyper-V Manager, but the recommendation from Microsoft is to use the Failover Cluster Manager if you are running a clustered environment.
Once you start up the Failover Cluster Manager, click on Roles on the left pane, and then you will see all the virtual machines being listed in the middle pane.
Hyper-V (version 2008 and above), allows you to do a Quick Migration. A Quick Migration will save the memory and virtual machine state to disk. The destination VM on the destination node reads the state and then starts up the VM. When you are using Cluster Shared Volumes in the nodes there is no need to copy the virtual machine configuration and virtual hard disks. This method is suitable for planned maintenance and there is a downtime involved while the machine state is saved and read in the destination node.
In version 2008R2, Live Migration was introduced. Live Migration does not save the machine state, but rather it copies the VM's memory to the destination VM on the other node. It will keep track of any changes in the source VM's memory during the copy, and then does a copy of those changes and starts up the new VM on the destination server. When you are using Cluster Shared Volumes in the nodes, there will be no need to copy the virtual machine configuration and virtual hard disks. This method is also suitable for planned maintenance and the users won't even notice that a migration took place as it's very seamless.
Live Migration involves the system checking to make sure that it can proceed with the Live Migration i.e. network connectivity, compatible host hardware, enough RAM etc.. on the destination node before it proceeds. If there are going to be issues Live Migration will not proceed.
For Hyper-V versions 2008 and 2008R2, it is required that the servers are setup in a failover cluster for Quick Migration and Live Migration to work.
In Hyper-V 2012 and 2012R2, it is not required that the servers are in a failover cluster. Windows 2012 supports SMB file share for storage of virtual machines. Users no longer have to invest in expensive SANs, but rather they can invest in some sort of central storage which supports SMB file shares.
That's the basics of Quick Migration and Live Migration.
Do read up more on this topic on the Microsoft Technet site.
I used Live Migration to move my VM. Also, in Windows 2012 there is an option to move the VM configuration and virtual hard disks to another volume. This is done HOT without downtime. It involves the configuration and virtual hard disks being copied first to the destination volume before the VM seamlessly switch over to the new volume automatically. I had to do this because the original volume was starting to run low on space.
-Sirisoft Blogger
Well, I am happy to say with the client I am working for right now, they have a very good failover clustering Hyper-V environment running on top of Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacentre attached to an EMC VNX 5300 SAN. The guy who set it up unfortunately no longer works there.
To cut a long story short, I needed to move a VM to another node (another host in the cluster).
With failover clustering being used for Hyper-V you need to run the Failover Cluster Manager to manage the VMs. You don't use the Hyper-V Manager, even though you can start it up and see the virtual machines. You can change some settings with Hyper-V Manager, but the recommendation from Microsoft is to use the Failover Cluster Manager if you are running a clustered environment.
Once you start up the Failover Cluster Manager, click on Roles on the left pane, and then you will see all the virtual machines being listed in the middle pane.
Hyper-V (version 2008 and above), allows you to do a Quick Migration. A Quick Migration will save the memory and virtual machine state to disk. The destination VM on the destination node reads the state and then starts up the VM. When you are using Cluster Shared Volumes in the nodes there is no need to copy the virtual machine configuration and virtual hard disks. This method is suitable for planned maintenance and there is a downtime involved while the machine state is saved and read in the destination node.
In version 2008R2, Live Migration was introduced. Live Migration does not save the machine state, but rather it copies the VM's memory to the destination VM on the other node. It will keep track of any changes in the source VM's memory during the copy, and then does a copy of those changes and starts up the new VM on the destination server. When you are using Cluster Shared Volumes in the nodes, there will be no need to copy the virtual machine configuration and virtual hard disks. This method is also suitable for planned maintenance and the users won't even notice that a migration took place as it's very seamless.
Live Migration involves the system checking to make sure that it can proceed with the Live Migration i.e. network connectivity, compatible host hardware, enough RAM etc.. on the destination node before it proceeds. If there are going to be issues Live Migration will not proceed.
For Hyper-V versions 2008 and 2008R2, it is required that the servers are setup in a failover cluster for Quick Migration and Live Migration to work.
In Hyper-V 2012 and 2012R2, it is not required that the servers are in a failover cluster. Windows 2012 supports SMB file share for storage of virtual machines. Users no longer have to invest in expensive SANs, but rather they can invest in some sort of central storage which supports SMB file shares.
That's the basics of Quick Migration and Live Migration.
Do read up more on this topic on the Microsoft Technet site.
I used Live Migration to move my VM. Also, in Windows 2012 there is an option to move the VM configuration and virtual hard disks to another volume. This is done HOT without downtime. It involves the configuration and virtual hard disks being copied first to the destination volume before the VM seamlessly switch over to the new volume automatically. I had to do this because the original volume was starting to run low on space.
-Sirisoft Blogger
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