Microsoft Virtual Academy

Module 5

Virtual Machine Movement and Hyper-V

Replica

Module Overview
Providing High Availability and Redundancy for Virtualization
Implementing Virtual Machine Movement
Implementing and Managing Hyper-V Replica

Lesson 1: Providing High Availability

and Redundancy for Virtualization
Why Is High Availability Important?
Redundancy in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V

Why Is High Availability Important?

Server downtime is unavoidable
Servers are not always available
Software or hardware maintenance or upgrade
Application and operating system updates
Component failure, power outages, natural
disasters

Critical services must be constantly

available

Availabilit Downtime (per

y
year)

Running in virtual machines99%

When fails or unavailable 99.9%

It must be serviced elsewhere99.99%

Goal of high availability

Make services available

99.999%

3.7 days
8.8 hours
53 minutes
5.3 minutes

Redundancy in Windows Server 2012

R2 and Hyper-V
Disaster
recovery

Application /
Service failover

I/O redundancy

Physical server
failure
Hardware
failure

Hyper-V Replica for asynchronous replication

CSV integration with storage arrays for
synchronous replication
Non-cluster aware apps: Hyper-V app
monitoring
Virtual machine guest cluster: iSCSI, Fibre
Channel, .vhdx sharing
Virtual machine guest teaming of SR-IOV NICS
NLB and NIC Teaming
Storage multi-path IO
Multichannel SMB
Live migration for planned downtime
Failover clustering for unplanned downtime
Windows hardware error architecture
Reliability, availability, serviceability

Lesson 2: Implementing Virtual

Machine Movement
Virtual Machine Moving Options
How Storage Migration Works
Overview of the Move Wizard
Live Migration of Non-clustered Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine Moving Options

Virtual machine and storage migration
Includes from Windows Server 2012 to Windows
Server 2012 R2
Quick migration requires failover clustering
Live migration requires only network

connectivity

Improved performance in Windows Server 2012 R2

Hyper-V Replica
Asynchronously replicate virtual machines
Configure replication frequency and extended
replication
Exporting and Importing of a virtual machine

Exporting while virtual machine is running

How Storage Migration Works

1. Read/Write to
source virtual hard
disk

Hyper-V server

2. Virtual hard disk is

copied to
destination

Virtual machine
Virtual hard disk stack

3. Writes are mirrored

to source and
destination virtual
hard disks

1
2

5
Virtual hard
disk

4
Virtual hard
disk

Virtual machine is running

uninterrupted during the
migration process

Compares with
Storage vMotion

4. After virtual hard

disk is
synchronized,
virtual machine
switches to copied
virtual hard disk

Overview of the Move Wizard

Used for moving virtual machine or its

storage
While virtual machine is running
Live migration or storage migration

Live migration must be enabled before moving virtual

machine

All virtual machine data can be moved to same

location

Alternatively, use Windows PowerShell cmdlets Move-VM

or Move-VMStorage
Storage migration is enabled by default (two at the
same time)

Or you can specify location for each data item

Or you can move only virtual hard disk

Virtual machine data items

Live Migration of Non-clustered

Virtual Machines

Compares with
vMotion

Referred as a shared nothing live migration

Virtual machine data can be local or on an SMB
share
Local: storage migration to move to target Hyper-V
host
SMB: leave data on the SMB 3.0 share
In both cases virtual machine is moved

Storage migration and virtual machine move

Storage is migrated
Virtual machine memory is moved
Source storage is deleted

Live migration speed is affected by

Virtual machine memory size and modifications

Live Migration of Non-clustered Virtual

Machines
Virtual machine memory is moved in
iterations
Source is active and can be modifying memory
Modified memory pages are sent after initial
copy

Repeats over newly modified pages

New MAC address is send to network

switches
State
State

Configuration
Configuration

Final copy iteration takes less than TCP

timeoutmemory
Virtual machine
Virtual machine memory

Source Hyper-V host

Destination Hyper-V host

Lesson 3: Implementing and Managing

Hyper-V Replica
Prerequisites for Hyper-V Replica
Overview of Hyper-V Replica
Enabling a Virtual Machine for Replication
Hyper-V Replication Health
Test Failover, Planned Failover, and Failover
Hyper-V Replica Resynchronization

Prerequisites for Hyper-V Replica

Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V role
Hyper-V Replica is part of the Hyper-V role
At least two servers, usually in different sites
Sufficient storage to host virtual machines

Local and replicated virtual machines

Connectivity between primary and replica

sites
Windows firewall configured to allow
replication

Hyper-V Replica HTTP and Hyper-V Replica HTTPS

X.509v3 certificate for mutual

authentication

Overview of Hyper-V Replica

Hyper-V Replica has the following

components:

Replication engine

Change tracking module

Provides a secure and efficient channel to transfer data

Hyper-V Replica Broker server role

Keeps track of the write operations in the virtual

machine

Network module

Manages replication configuration and handles initial

replication, delta replication, failover, and test-failover

Provides seamless replication while a virtual machine is

running on different failover cluster nodes

Management tools

Hyper-V Manager, Windows PowerShell, Failover Cluster

Overview of Hyper-V Replica

Primary Site

Initial Replica
Replicated
Changes

CSV on
Block
Storage

SMB
Share
File Based
Storage

Secondary
Site

Enabling a Virtual Machine for

Replication

Replication is enabled per virtual machine

Enable Replication Wizard

Primary

Replica server
10.22.100.18
Connection parameters
Choose replication VHDs
Chose replication frequency
Configure additional recovery points
Choose initial replication method

Failover TCP/IP Settings

Replica
192.168.15.10

Virtual
machin
e
virtual

Preconfigure IP address for replica

machine
Requires integration services
Should be configured on both the primary and
replica server

Hyper-V Replication Health

Normal
Less than 20% replication cycles are missed
Last synchronization point was less than an hour
ago
Average latency is less than the configured limit

Warning
Greater than 20% of replication cycles have been
missed
More than hour since the last send replica
Initial replication has not been completed
Failover initiated, but not reverse replication
Primary virtual machine replication is paused

Critical
Replica paused on the replica virtual machine

Test Failover, Planned Failover, and

Failover
Test failover
Non-disruptive testing, with zero downtime
New virtual machine created in recovery site

From the replica checkpoint

Turned off and not connected

Stop Test Failover

Planned failover
Initiated at primary virtual machine which is
turned off
Sends data that has not been replicated
Fail over to replica server
Start the replica virtual machine
Reverse the replication after primary site is

Test Failover, Planned Failover, and

Failover
Failover

Initiated at replica virtual machine

Primary virtual machine has failed (turned off or

unavailable)
Data loss can occur

Reverse the replication after primary site is

recovered

Other replication-related actions

Pause Replication and Resume Replication
View Replication Health
Extend Replication
Remove Recovery Points
Remove Replication

Hyper-V Replica Resynchronization

When normal replication process is

interrupted
Change tracking issues on primary server
Replication issues with tracking logs
Problems linking virtual hard disk with parent
Time travel virtual machine restored from backup
Reverse replication after failover process

Processor, storage, and network intensive

Configured on primary virtual machine

Manual, automatic, or during scheduled time

If more than 6 hours, perform full initial

replication