Live Migration in the coming Hyper-V R2

The new Hyper-V R2 will ship with Live migration (LM), the most requested Hyper-V feature.

What it can do is moves a Virtual Machine from one node of the Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) to another node in the same cluster in a fashion that is transparent to the clients that are connected to it. This is done with no dropped network connections, no loss of service, no perceived user downtime.
Live Migration is supposed to only take the VM offline for less than 1 second, compared to the current Quick Migration which will take a few seconds.

Live migration is accomplished by replicating and synchronizing the contents of memory and processor(s) being used by the VM and then quickly switching access to the storage and network from the source node to the destination node. This switch is done quickly enough that the network sessions from client systems connecting to the VM are not lost and therefore has little to no impact on the service that the VM is providing.

I am eager to test it out!!!

Migrate Virtual Machine from Virtual Server 2005 to Hyper-V

This post is to illustrate how to migrate a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Virtual Machine to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

My Virtual Machine is a Windows 2003 Server and I did this on a box-to-box migration. It is easy, so enjoy!



Pre migration process:

1. The guest systems needs to be upgraded to the latest Service Pack (Vista SP1, XP SP3, Windows 2003 SP2).

2. Install Windows Server 2008 onto the new machine and install Hyper-V. (make sure it you installed any hotfixes for Hyper-V too)

3. Copy the VHD to the new Hyper-V box.

4. Setup a Virtual Network on the new Hyper-V server.



Migration Steps:

1. Open Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine.

2. Type a Name for the VM and if desired, you can store the virtual machine in a different location.

3. Specify the amount of Memory to assign to this VM.

4. Assign a Network Adapter.

5. Select "Use an existing virtual hard disk" and select the .VHD file to migrate.

6. Click Finish and start the new Virtual Machine.

7. The new VM will begin detecting and installing new hardware. If prompted to install an Unknown Device, select "Ask me again later".


*I suggest to go through the below steps although it might have to effects on some platforms

8. Uninstall the Legacy Virtual Machine Additions from Add/Remove Programs.

9. Update the HAL. Click on Start, type "msconfig", click on Boot Tab, Advanced options. Check the box "Detect Hal". Then click OK to save and OK to exit msconfig.

10. Now restart the Virtual Machine.

11. Next step is to install Microsoft Hyper-V Integration Components on the new VM. Connect to the console of the Guest system, click Action, Insert Integration Services Setup Disk. Run "Install Microsoft Hyper-V Integration Components".

12. You will get a warning that you need to upgrade the HAL. Click OK. Restart the system when installation completes.

12. You will prompted to reboot again. Reboot again and you should now boot up to your migrated Virtual Machine.