Windows 2012 Server - Shared Nothing Live Migration Requirements

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blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#111115 24-Oct-2012 16:41

Hello,

I have 2x DL 380 G7's running Windows 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V. Both are over spec'ed to the point where all VMs can run from a single server, the second is there for redundancy (a better option than having a replacement mobo/cpu etc on hand).

Currently both physical servers are just in a workgroup. I intended for our domain controller to be running in a VM in future and having the Hyper-V server boot when the domain controller is not available would obviously create problems.

I am upgrading the Hyper-V servers to Windows 2012 server, one machine at a time. It appears that shared nothing live migration is only available if the Hyper-V servers are joined to a domain.

But if I have to join the Hyper-V servers to a secondary domain with a DC running on a separate physical computer, it defeats the purpose of having 2 Hyper-V servers for redundancy -- I become reliant upon the DC running on a separate single computer.

I like having my Hyper-V servers independent and easily replaceable. Am I missing something? Should I just do without live migration? What is best practice given my setup?

Thanks

Regs

4064 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#705897 24-Oct-2012 20:11

not sure on the requirements for shared nothing live migration, but there is also Hyper-V Replica available which doesn't require domain joining.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134172.aspx

Hyper-V Replica provides asynchronous replication of Hyper-V virtual machines between two hosting servers. It is simple to configure and does not require either shared storage or any particular storage hardware. Any server workload that can be virtualized in Hyper-V can be replicated. Replication works over any ordinary IP-based network, and the replicated data can be encrypted during transmission. Hyper-V Replica works with standalone servers, failover clusters, or a mixture of both. The servers can be physically co-located or widely separated geographically. The physical servers do not need to be in the same domain, or even joined to any domain at all.

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blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#706097 25-Oct-2012 09:02

Thanks. I hadn't got that far yet as I have only installed 2012 on one server and was playing around with what I could.

But actually replica looks like a better option for our situation. Just means I have to load the second Hyper-V server up with disks and sacrifice a bunch of disk space. But given the benefits it sounds like a good option.

And hopefully it means I can run a couple of VMs on Hyper-V #1, replicating them to Hyper-V #2, and a couple of other VMs on Hyper-V #2, replicating them to Hyper-V #1. That would mean that if one server did go down, we could still get some work done.

Zeon

3876 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#706117 25-Oct-2012 09:35

Why not put a domain controller on both server? Or have a server running Hyper-V as a domain controller also?

Man just use VMware - more simple :)

Speedtest 2019-10-14

blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#706210 25-Oct-2012 12:05

I guess I could but best practice is not to install any other services on a Hyper-V server. Basically it's meant to be just Hyper-V + Management software + Backup software.

Does the free version of vmware do shared nothing live migration as well? Didn't even know. The replication option looks to be better anyway.

Zeon

3876 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#706217 25-Oct-2012 12:12

VMware doesn't have a "shared nothing" live migration but to be honest, that isn't what you need if you want high availability using 2 servers. You will need shared storage (IE one but better yet, dual SANs) and a Vcenter server for VMware and the software alone is like 3.5k USD.

An interesting thing I saw with Hyper V is to use Starwind active active SAN software to run both a SAN and hyper-v virtualizaiton on the same server.

Speedtest 2019-10-14