VM /ETC

I finally took the time to get technical details about how to enable Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration.  My experience with the product has been limited to stand alone, “Rock Box” instances of Microsoft’s hypervisor only, but I recently attended a Lunch and Learn where I received a good understanding of what steps to take in order to create a Hyper-V Cluster for Live Migration. It’s Tricky if you are used to VMware, but not exactly “Hard Times“.

In light of other bloggers Raising Hell with clustered file system discussions in the V12N blogisphere recently, This post is not attempting to proclaim one solution is the “King of Rock.” I am simply listing the prerequisites as I understand them and providing useful links to configuration details for an administrator charged with evaluating/ building a Microsoft Hyper-V environment including Live Migration.

I do not want anyone to say to me “Rich, You Be Illin’“. I’m just sticking with a “It’s Like That” approach to posting this information. Hopefully, this post will help others plan for a Hyper-V implementation that goes so well they will be Krush Groovin’ like it’s Christmas In Hollis when finished.

I also want to point out I have not actually created a Hyper-V Cluster with Live Migration yet. I’m posting my notes and some links for when I might eventually have to put on My Addidas (without the laces) and Walk This Way. Please let me know in the comments if I have some of these details wrong.

Before you get serious, I suggest you use this YouTube Playlist as the soundtrack for the rest of this post.

I’ll use the overview of steps to implement Live Migration provided in the Microsoft TechNet Guide titled Hyper-V: Using Live Migration with Cluster Shared Volumes in Windows Server 2008 R2 to organize the rest of this post.

Steps for implementing live migration

• Install Windows Server 2008 R2 and enable the Hyper-V role on all nodes in the failover cluster.
  
  • For more information, see the Hyper-V Planning and Deployment Guide.
    

• Install the Failover Clustering feature on all servers that you want to include in the cluster.
  
  • For more information, see the Hyper-V Step-by-Step Guide: Hyper-V and Failover Clustering
    

• Configure as nodes in a failover cluster.
  
  • For more information, see the Failover Cluster Deployment Guide.
    

• Validate the cluster configuration.
  
  • For more information, see the Failover Cluster Step-by-Step Guide: Validating Hardware for a Failover Cluster.
    

• Configure Cluster Shared Volumes
  
• Set up a virtual machine for live migration
  
• Configure cluster networks for live migration
  
  
• Initiate a live migration of a virtual machine
  
  

Active Directory and software prerequisites

If you did not catch the implied Active Directory dependencies from the overview of steps, I’m pointing them out now. Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS) is needed. This means providing a quorum disk between hosts and the use of a MSCS service account. I was told all normal MSCS configurations apply. Therefore membership in an Active Directory Domain is recommended. Although using Hyper-V as a member server in a Workgroup is possible it is cumbersome to configure.

Server 2008 R2 Enterprise or Datacenter Editions must be used as the operating systems of the physical Hyper-V hosts. All nodes must have the same updates and patches applied.

Failover Clustering

Steps 2 through 4 all are about getting Failover Clustering working. Follow the link provided above to the TechNet guide for Hyper-V clustering for all the details, but here are some of my quick notes:

• MSCS has a 16 node limit, so 16 Hyper-V hosts clusters are the possible maximum.
• The storage used must be certified for Server 2008.
• Hyper-V can utilize FC or iSCSI storage. NFS does not appear to be an option from what I was told. iSCSI and multipathing software must be installed on the Hyper-V hosts.
• A private network with it’s own ip subnet must be created between Hyper-V hosts in the cluster.
• Separate and dedicated NICs are recommended for iSCSI and cluster heartbeat connections

Cluster Shared Volumes

Once you have the Failover Clustering in place, you can use a single NTFS volume as a repository for multiple virtual machines. Using the Failover Cluster Manager, you can add storage as a Clustered Shared Volume. Once this is configured all nodes of that Hyper-V cluster share the volume and have access to manage all of the VMs that are on it.

The storage location appears as SystemDrive\ClusterStorage on all nodes of the failover cluster. Under SystemDrive\ClusterStorage, a specific folder appears for each volume on the disk (or disks) that was added as a Cluster Shared Volume. You can view the list of volumes in Failover Cluster Manager. When you create new VMs on Hyper-V hosts they should be placed in this location.

Set up a virtual machine for live migration

To set up a virtual machine for live migration, you need to do the following:

1. Create the virtual machine
2. Configure the virtual machine to use Cluster Shared Volumes
3. Reconfigure the automatic start action on the virtual machine
4. Make the virtual machine highly available

For information about how to perform these procedures, see Steps 6 and 7 in Hyper-V Step-by-Step Guide: Hyper-V and Failover Clustering.

Configure cluster networks for live migration

A separate private network is also recommended for live migration between Hyper-V hosts. There can be more than one cluster network used by Live Migration, and you can specify the order of which networks are attempted.

Clustered networks are configured by virtual machine in the Failover Cluster Manager, but once you enable a single VM for a live migration network all VMs are enabled for the same network.

Initiate a live migration of a virtual machine

Live Migration can be initiated from the Failover Cluster Manager, powershell, or SCVMM.

Other Helpful links

• virtualboy.tv hyper-v video series at http://virtualboytv.blip.tv/
  • Some of the videos to watch are:
    • Hyper-V R2: Introducing Cluster Shared Volumes
    • Hyper-V R2: Building a Hyper-V R2 Cluster

• virtualboy.com blog posts
  • http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit/archive/2009/05/22/virtualboytv-com-hyper-v-r2-introducing-cluster-shared-volumes.aspx

Summary

Configuring a Hyper-V Cluster with Live Migration requires planning and prerequisites that VMware administrators are not used to. This is not a negative, but simply a fact. I hope this post helped you realize that “It’s Like That, and That’s The Way It Is.”

By the way, can you guess what I was listening to on my iPod Nano when I was inspired to create this post? J

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