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Moving VMs between Clusters and to Standalone Hyper-V Server
Moving VMs between Clusters and to Standalone Hyper-V Server
- Is it possible to move VMs between two different Hyper-V Clusters (CSV) using Quick Storage Migration feature of MSCVMM2008R2?
AND
Is it possible to move VMs from a Hyper-V Cluster (CSV) to a standalone Hyper-V Server?
Off course, without exporting and importing them!
Thanks in advance.
Answers
- It can move. But moving in and out of the Library in between might be required.
Edwin Yuen talks about it here:
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/25/system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2008-r2-quick-storage-migration.aspx
From reading that it appears that what you ask about is possible.
But I have discovered that SCVMM sometimes imposes limitations on certain functions, and I have not attempted this myself.
What you are introducing is that your VM is clustered (Highly Available). That is the big hitch.
What you might need to do is remove the VM from being highly available in order to move it the way that you want. And this is possible.
Another idea is to use a SAN level locking mechanism that handles the file locking and share a single LUN between two hosts (without CSV involved). Then migrate or export the VM to that LUN, then remove the configuration from host A and create the configuration on host b.
It sounds a bit convoluted - but one of the main stumbling blocks that cause the creativeness is the volume level file locking of NTFS (this is what lead to the creation of CSV - to attempt to handle this problem).
And if CSV is in charge, then all the nodes must be participating in that cluster and then you couls only move the VM to a local volume of a single host (if it is on a CSV volume but not Highly Available).
The Highly Available part is the next hurdle.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful)- Marked As Answer byVincent HuMSFT, ModeratorMonday, November 16, 2009 7:49 AM
All Replies
Hi,
Is it possible to move VMs between two different Hyper-V Clusters (CSV) using Quick Storage Migration feature of MSCVMM2008R2?
>> I don’t know what’s the exact meaning of your “different Hyper-V Clusters (CSV)”, did you mean two nodes of one cluster or two different cluster? If it’s two different cluster, I don’t think it’s possible. However, I recommend that you get further support in the corresponding community so that you can get the most qualified pool of respondents. Thanks for your understanding.
For your convenience, I have list the related link as followed.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/virtualmachinemanager
Is it possible to move VMs from a Hyper-V Cluster (CSV) to a standalone Hyper-V Server?
>> No, impossible.
Vincent Hu
- Thanks for replying. It is between two different cluster nodes that I wanted to know about. Like you have a node in Cluster A and a node in Cluster B; and the transfer between them. SCVMM can manage both clusters. There is an option in SCVMM R2 feature called Quick Storage Migration, can I utilize that? I know it can transfer VMs within clusters, but is inter-cluster a possibility?
Thanks in advance. - As Vincent mentions your question is better answered in the SCVMM forum - however...
First - you need to understand what Quick Migration is (and no, it is not new with SCVMM R2 it has been around since the very first release of SCVMM).
Live Migration uses Failover Clustering.
Cluster Shared Volumes is a feature of Failover Clustering that allows VHds from different VMs on the same host LUN.
These are two seperate technologies of Hyper-V.
Quick Migration is a feature of SCVMM. It copies a VM config from one host and creates it on the receiving host and then detaches the LUN the VHD is stored on and moves that LUN to the receiving host.
The VM must follow the SCVMM one VM per LUN rule.
It also requires that your SAN has VDS aware management software (installed on the SCVMM Server) and client software (installed on the hosts)
More here:
http://itproctology.blogspot.com/2009/03/migration-types-de-mystified.html
If your desire is to attempt to keep the VM running or to minimize down time - you have to be creative as you are asking if these migration models can do things that they were not designed to do. That does not mean that you might not get creative and reduce down time (not eliminate it).
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) - Thanks for replying Brian, but I was not asking about Quick Migration, but Quick Storage Migration. This is a new feature in SCVMM 2008 R2. I just want to know whether is it possible to migrate VMs from Cluster A to Cluster B using SCVMM 2008 R2? Sure, it can manage two, but moving VMs is what I am interested in.
- To move between two CSV volumes would be a network transfer from the perspective of SCVMM. You can absolutely do that. In fact, you could transfer a VM from one system to another, or one cluster to another, with SCVMM R1 or R2. Of course, the CSV feature came in R2.
- It can move. But moving in and out of the Library in between might be required.
Edwin Yuen talks about it here:
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/25/system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2008-r2-quick-storage-migration.aspx
From reading that it appears that what you ask about is possible.
But I have discovered that SCVMM sometimes imposes limitations on certain functions, and I have not attempted this myself.
What you are introducing is that your VM is clustered (Highly Available). That is the big hitch.
What you might need to do is remove the VM from being highly available in order to move it the way that you want. And this is possible.
Another idea is to use a SAN level locking mechanism that handles the file locking and share a single LUN between two hosts (without CSV involved). Then migrate or export the VM to that LUN, then remove the configuration from host A and create the configuration on host b.
It sounds a bit convoluted - but one of the main stumbling blocks that cause the creativeness is the volume level file locking of NTFS (this is what lead to the creation of CSV - to attempt to handle this problem).
And if CSV is in charge, then all the nodes must be participating in that cluster and then you couls only move the VM to a local volume of a single host (if it is on a CSV volume but not Highly Available).
The Highly Available part is the next hurdle.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful)- Marked As Answer byVincent HuMSFT, ModeratorMonday, November 16, 2009 7:49 AM
