VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘svmotion’

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft Virtualization Team Senior Technical Product Manager, has introduced Hyper-V’s latest feature closely emulating VMware’s virtual infrastructure enterprise product offerings. Quick Storage Migration (QSM) is being added to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2. SCVMM 2008 R2 Release Canidate was recently released to the public. Hyper-V’s final release was integrated in Windows Server 2008 SP2.

Quoting Yuen’s post on the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog titled System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 – Quick Storage Migration, here are some high level notes about QSM:

• QSM enables the migration of a VM not only between storage locations but also from one SAN to another
• QSM relies on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
• QSM can move the virtual disks of a running virtual machine independent of storage protocols (iSCSI, FC) or storage type (local, DAS, SAN), with minimal downtime
• QSM will not be available on the free Hyper-V Server 2008 version and requires Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
• Quick Storage Migration is included with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 both in the Enterprise Edition and the Workgroup Edition
• A VM can remain running for the almost the entire duration of the transfer of its virtual disks from one storage location to another. The post estimates the VM downtime to be under 1 minute in most cases assuming W2K8 R2.
• The VM is put into save-state (Hyper-V snapshot) for a brief interval to migrate its memory state and associated differencing disks.

Yuen’s post provides a feature comparison table of QSM versus VMware’s Storage Vmotion. The following is a screen shot of the table. Read the rest of this entry »