1. Hyper-V Live Migration
with Windows Server 2012
Lionel Shaul – Senior Instructor / Corporate Infrastructure Manager

2. What is Migration?
• Migration is moving a VM from one host to another
• Migration can be done when the VM is either powered on or off.

3. Live Migration
• Live Migration implies the VM is moved to another host without
being powered off.
• The VM is inaccessible for a very short period of time (on the order of
milliseconds)
• VMware calls this vMotion.

4. Quick Migration
• Quick Migration was Microsoft’s predecessor to Live Migration.
• The VM was actually powered down, moved and then powered up.
This process occurred over a period of seconds.

5. Why is the speed of the migration
important?
• If the migration occurs quickly enough, applications on the VM will
not time out.
• This will allow the migration of VMs during regular business hours.
• VMware has done this for years.
• VMware does load balancing of hosts using vMotion. It is called DRS,
Distributed Resource Scheduling.
• Only the most anal of IT shops restrict vMotion to outside of business
hours.

6. Recommended Setup for Live
Migration
• Windows Server 2012
• Failover Cluster
• VMs installed as a role on the cluster
• Shared storage for the cluster members
• CSV (Cluster Shared Volumes) to store VMs

7. Shared Storage
• Can use FC (fibre channel), iSCSI or SMB 3.0
• Windows Server 2012 can be both an iSCSI Target and Initiator
• iSCSI is less expensive to implement than FC.
• NFS is not supported for Failover Clustering.
• SMB 3.0 is relatively new, many SANS may not yet support it.
• RemoteDMA nics employing infiniband are very fast, (40 +Gbs) and
can support SMB 3.0. Watch for their prices to drop.

8. CSV Cluster Shared Volumes
• As the name applies, CSV are cluster aware.
• CSVs permit multiple hosts to access the file system simultaneously.
• This eliminates the need to have each VM on a separate LUN.
• VMware’s file system, VMFS, has always had this functionality

9. Let’s build our demo and test it out.
• Join our hosts to the domain
• Install the Hyper-V role on the hosts
• Create an iSCSI target
• Connect to the shared storage via the iSCSI initiator
• Install the Failover Cluster feature and create a cluster
• Add a VM to the cluster
• Compare and measure the speed of different migration methods.

10. Available Courses
Hyper-V for Windows Server 2012
• Configuring and Administering Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 (3 days)
Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008
• Implementing and Managing Microsoft Server Virtualization (5 days)