Hello All,
This is my first post here, but I have used these forums many times for information. Sorry in advance for the long post.
I have a few questions regarding migration to Hyper-V server 2012 for my production environment. I have done quite a bit of reading, but I have a few direct questions and I would like to get some direct answers.
My current production environment consists of one PowerEdge 2900 with 2 Xeon X5460 Quad Core 3.16GHz CPUs, 24 GB of RAM and a RAID 10 consisting of 8, 500 GB HDDs for a total of 2TB of storage. I am currently running Server 2008 R2 Enterprise w/ GUI as the
Hyper-V host OS. I have 4 virtual machines all also running Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. The 4 virtual machines consist of 1 domain controller, 1 Exchange Server with Exchange 2010 Standard, 1 Server running SharePoint 2010 Enterprise and the remaining server
running IIS with FTP and HTTP.
The network topology is as follows….
Hopefully it is clear from my diagram that the Hyper-V host OS is connected to the same physical network as the domain, but is not a joined to the domain. I set it up this way because I had concerns about connectivity and manageability because the domain
controller is a guest VM. Also, the IIS server is on a completely different physical network independent of the domain.
What I would like to accomplish is the migration of the above environment to Hyper-V Server 2012 as is. I want to keep my existing guest VMs unchanged and running Server 2008 R2 for now as well as keep the existing network topology intact.
I have 3 additional servers in a separate test environment that would be able to serve as temporary storage or whatever is needed for the migration process.
Here are the two main things I would like to accomplish with this migration…
1. Make the transition from Server 2008 R2 to Hyper-V Server 2012 as a host OS.
2. Migrate virtual hard disks from .VHD to the new .VHDX format.
All that being said, I have finally come to my questions regarding this process.
First and foremost, I would obviously need to back up my current setup in case something goes horribly wrong during the migration. My question regarding the initial backup is would it be better to do a bare metal backup of the Hyper-V host or should I do
individual backups (bare-metal?) of the Guest VMs from within their operating systems?
Second, since I plan to use Hyper-V Server 2012, I will have to manage the host OS using the RSAT from a domain joined client running Windows 7 Professional. How much of a pain is it going to be to setup RSAT and manage the non-domain joined host from a
domain joined client? Is there a better way without using SCVMM or using Server 2012 w/ a GUI as the host OS?
Third, are there any concerns I should have, precautions I should take or procedures I need to do before, during or after the migration regarding the existing VMs and the new virtualized hardware environment on the same physical host?
Forth, should I use the trial version of SCVMM 2012 SP1 (or another previous version) to perform the migration? What should I be aware of using SCVMM for the migration and then discontinuing its use after the migration is complete and moving to management
using the RSAT?
Fifth, if I don’t use SCVMM for the migration, what is the best procedure for moving the VMs? Should I just copy the VHDs to a temporary storage location, install Hyper-V server 2012, copy the VHDs back, create new VMs and attach the VHDs or should I use
the export/import process?
Number six, when is the best time to migrate the VHDs to VHDX format and what would be the best method?
And finally, do I need to worry about USN rollback with a single domain controller? From my reading, this seems to be a point of disagreement. Some people say it could happen while others say it won’t. Is there any point during the migration process where
it could occur either during the copying of VHDs or from the switch to VHDX?
Again, sorry for the long post and thanks for staying with me this far. Any information would be much appreciated