asked on

how do you move a VM from hyper-v 2008 R2 to hyper-v 2012 R2?

I have an older machine that is running windows server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition. It hosts two VM's, a file server and domain controller. The actual drive that these VM's are stored on resides on a Dell Equallogic SAN. I would like to move these VM's to a new Windows server 2012 R2 Standard server. What do you think is the best method? Are there any step-by-step instructions on this process?

Cliff Galiher

Export the VM and import the VM is the easiest and most reliable method. I admittedly haven't used a 2008 R2 host in a few years (since Microsoft offers a free hypervisor product) but I am fairly confident that quick and love migrations outside a cluster were not introduced until 2012. So once you are on that platform, future upgrades will be easier. But for now, export/import is the safe path.

This will upgrade your VM metadata too, so moving backwards won't be an option. So definitely have backups.

SOLUTION