Part 4 - Live migration of VM

Live Migration of virtual machine in SCVMM 2012 R2 :-

Part 1 - Create a SMB 3.0 Share

Part 2 - Create file share

Part 3 - Assign file share

On part one of the series we have created the SMB, then part 2 describes how to add the SMB in SCVMM, Part 3 give us a step by step instruction on how to assign the disk to a server.

Now, in part 4 of the series we will look into an amazing feature of SCVMM called the Live Migration of VM’s.

Go to VMs and services/All Hosts/Host Group/Then select the host,

Click on “create virtual machine” & then select “Create Virtual Machine”:-

  

Select the appropriate option; I have selected “Use an existing virtual machine, VM template, or virtual hard disk” & then selected the template which I was having. You can choose the available option & then click on next to continue:-

 

Provide a Name to the Virtual machine & click on next to continue:-

 

Change the network configuration & click on next to continue:-

 

Review the settings & the domain join account, Click on next to continues:-

 

Select the place where you want to store the virtual machine, I have selected the Host group here:-

 

Select the Host where you want to create the Virtual machine, before creating the virtual machine SCVMM gives us the star rating about the Hosts (it tells us which host is most suitable for the machine deployment using the star rating), Select the appropriate host & then click on next to continue :-

 

Provide a name to the virtual machine:-

Check few more settings related to the path of the VHD file (Check if it’s in the SMB location):-

Select the settings you want to be present for your virtual machine when the host starts & then click on next to continue :-

Click on create to create the machine on the selected host:-

After the machine is created it will be listed in SCVMM under the host now we can check the SMB server for the VHD:-

 

Now, the machine is created in the hyper-v host lets now proceed with the live migration of virtual machine to another host.

Select the machine & from the upper ribbon click on “Migrate virtual machine”:-

Select the host were you want to migrate the virtual machine, I was having only two hosts so, I selected the other one, Check the Transfer Type option it says “Live”, click on next to proceed:-

 

Review the summary & click on “move” to start the live migration process:-

If the SMB was not assigned to the hyper-v host what we did in part 3 we would get few more option here which would have asked us the location where we want to save the VHD & VM configuration files. So, if you are getting such options here Go to Part 3 of the series & do the settings mentioned in the article.

The migration process will start now:-

 

If everything works fine the machine gets migrated to the other hyper-v host without any issue, few things we should be concerned about are the network for the virtual machine, the Hyper-V network adapter on both the hosts should be same i.e. their name should be same.

In the processor settings of the virtual machine this option should be checked:-

Till the process executes, we can go & have a look at the process running from “Jobs”:-

Once it’s done we can go back to the “VMs and Services” & check if the Virtual machine is migrated to the other host (NC2PWSHost1):-

The machine has been migrated here & the status of the machine was “Running”.