Replication - hosts on domain or not?

[rpain]

Hi,

 

I wonder whether I could have some opinions please.

 

I have 2 hosts as member servers and I'd like to set up the second as a replica (it's currently empty other than hyper-v). I have 2 VMs on the first host (one DC and the other runs the BMS/photocopiers) - total size of both is about 160gb (we use M365 for files/emails and our mis is hosted hence the small size).

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I have three options:

 

1. Keep both hosts as member servers and set up certificates to allow replication

2. Create a domain just for the hosts then use kerberos

3. Join the hosts to the domain that is run on the vm and use kerberos

 

I see possible downsides with all solutions -

 

1 just seems fiddly

2 over the top?

3 could there be access problems i the domain controller vm goes down?

 

What should I do?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Richard

[kevin_lane]

Why do you want to use replication?

[kevin_lane]

If you want redundancy then go with clustering

[rpain]

Why do you want to use replication?

 

- because I don't want the wait of restoring a backup if the first fails for whatever reason. The second server's hardware is slower than the operational one so I would presume that clustering would give me a performance drop due to the second host?

 

Thanks

[kevin_lane]

- because I don't want the wait of restoring a backup if the first fails for whatever reason. The second server's hardware is slower than the operational one so I would presume that clustering would give me a performance drop due to the second host?

 

Thanks

 

I see...well hyper-v isn’t server / application aware aware as such and won’t move the VMs in the event of a failure...at least I’m not aware of said feature.

 

However clustering is and is the most preferred way of having that redundancy.

 

You use preferred host to which the VM moves to in the event of a failure if that helps?

[rpain]

Thanks for the advice. In the end I went for option 3 yesterday and the replication now happens every 5 minutes (only takes a few seconds). I’m going to do a planned failover later this week and see how it goes while there’s still no one on the network.

 

Would I need a SAN for clustering?

[kevin_lane]

https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-replica-replication-work/

[tubs]

You might want to look at new VHDs for virtual memory - replicate and then remove them from replication - if they are on the C: then they get fully replicated every sync. I think you've done it the correct way - part of the domain, there used to be some serious justifications for having the underlying HyperVs off the domain, but I think most of them are not accepted anymore, unless you have specific security needs.

 

Replication isn't clean or automatic - if server 1 goes down, you'll need to manually start servers2 VMs, but if you have enough space there shouldn't be an issue - but it has been a life save for me before!