Replacing Server and keeping the VMs
Have a 4yr old box running server 2012 with HyperV and running 5 VMs - am replacing with a New server 2016 and moving the VMs across.
Can i just enable replication of the VMs to the new box and then turn the old off ? Am I better to export and import in ?
Will I get issues with hardware being different / Host server name being different ?
Any pointers appreciated - its a live system so dont want to mess it up and have downtime.
Can i just enable replication of the VMs to the new box and then turn the old off ? Am I better to export and import in ?
Will I get issues with hardware being different / Host server name being different ?
Any pointers appreciated - its a live system so dont want to mess it up and have downtime.
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If I were doing this and downtime was not an option, I would clone one of the VMs and then live migrate the clone to the new server to make sure that it all works. Naturally, if cloning the VM you would need to consider changing network settings and licensing. You could as a second-best scenario create a VM for the purposes of testing the live migration so that you know it is going to be as trouble-free as possible.
I do not work with HyperV, so one other thing I would check is whether your VMs are para-virtualised or whether they use hardware virtualisation (if applicable). With a para-virtualised set-up, the VMs are generally going to be more "dependent" on the host hardware etc. This is definitely the case with the hypervisor that I tend to use. You should also check the situation with any VM "helper" utilities that potentially allow the VM to interact with the hypervisor.
One way would be to snapshot the VM, back it up and transfer it to the new server and check that it works without issue. This increases the chance that a live migration would be successful. I would also find out more about live migration between different versions of HyperV if this applies in your case.
I do not work with HyperV, so one other thing I would check is whether your VMs are para-virtualised or whether they use hardware virtualisation (if applicable). With a para-virtualised set-up, the VMs are generally going to be more "dependent" on the host hardware etc. This is definitely the case with the hypervisor that I tend to use. You should also check the situation with any VM "helper" utilities that potentially allow the VM to interact with the hypervisor.
One way would be to snapshot the VM, back it up and transfer it to the new server and check that it works without issue. This increases the chance that a live migration would be successful. I would also find out more about live migration between different versions of HyperV if this applies in your case.
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Thank you again - but if i backup the VM and transfer to new would it not conflict with the old when running to test ?
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