Hyper-V

[Hightower]

Couple of questions about Hyper-V based on let's say 1 VM and 2 hosts and a SAN

 

1) Can the 2 hosts work together on the same VM, or can a VM only be used on one host at a time?

 

2) Host 1 is working on VM, but host 1 goes down. Can Hyper-V work so host 2 picks up VM and continues working as normal

 

How does the whole VMM thing work? Does it need to be installed? Are the hosts reliant on this machine being turned on? If so, what happens when this VMM fails?

[strawberry]

a vm can only be on one host at a time, if you use clustering then you can either failover manually without loss of service or if a host fails the other will restart the vm's on it. You can setup rules as to what happens when, so if you have non production servers they may not need to failover to leave room for other servers.

 

Vmm is a way of managing the vm's, it comes on a 180 day trial you'll prob only need it for setting up your cluster.

 

virtual boy explains here http://virtualboytv.com/servers.aspx

[Cools]

you can have as many VM on the hyper V

but why have 2 hosts doing the same job on 1 HV

i would be more worried that the HV will go down.

[zag]

I just keep a copy of the VHD's offline on another server, copy them once a term.

 

Pretty simple but it works. Just remember to write down the mac addresses and you can swap anytime.

[Hightower]

I just keep a copy of the VHD's offline on another server, copy them once a term.

 

Pretty simple but it works. Just remember to write down the mac addresses and you can swap anytime.

 

But then you are up to 6 or 7 weeks behind at the end of the term - that's a whole lot of data

[zag]

But then you are up to 6 or 7 weeks behind at the end of the term - that's a whole lot of data

 

I have daily data backups taken in the normal way.

 

This is just really for server images and their configs although i do take a snapshot of the data as well. It provides great peace of mind this way.

 

Only problem with this approach really is Sims when it gets an upgrade mid term.

[Cools]

i have a backup Power Script that exports one a week my HV VMs and emails me once there done. you coud export once a day. depeding on your VM it takes a wile. my FOG server takes over 3 hours. and it only has 9 images for all the Computers in the school over a GIG Network.

[Hightower]

Alright - I have a bunch of questions about this still.

 

Would anyone be willing to let me contact them through email to ask away? If so, please PM me with your address.

 

Thanks

[gshaw]

There's a free Microsoft eBook explaining how Hyper-V works, high availability etc see here

 

Free Microsoft Ebooks: Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Virtualization R2, Office 2010 - Virtually Yours.. - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

[Hightower]

Great resource @gshaw, and really liking what Hyper-V can do.

 

Does anybody know how it handles a shutdown prompt from a UPS? Does it shutdown the VM/transfer the VM to another physical box before powering down?

[strawberry]

it shuts down and closes the vms as per their settings, Which are either turn off, save or shutdown. Neater way is to ask the ups to execute a ps script. Our servers are all on different up's so as soon as any one has aproblem it executes a script which closes down virtual machines first, then physical machines, leaving the most important ones till last.

[Hightower]

it shuts down and closes the vms as per their settings, Which are either turn off, save or shutdown. Neater way is to ask the ups to execute a ps script. Our servers are all on different up's so as soon as any one has aproblem it executes a script which closes down virtual machines first, then physical machines, leaving the most important ones till last.

 

And I'm guessing it would be easy to modify this script to tell it to run the VM from a different physical box?

[m25man]

Does anybody know how it handles a shutdown prompt from a UPS? Does it shutdown the VM/transfer the VM to another physical box before powering down?

You need Clustering and shared storage to do live migrations...

 

APC do a Hyper-V version of powerchute to handle their UPS's but it costs £78 inc VAT - I bought it last week but have not tried to set it up yet....

[strawberry]

yup, a ps script to move vms in a cluster is easy peasy. So you could adapt it to live migrate all your critical vms to one node.

[Hightower]

Microsoft recommend that a physical DC is running, and that virtualised servers are ran as member servers. As in my diagram here:

 

 

We want to run all our DC's as virtualised servers (otherwise what's the point of virtualising them in a failover way as we could lose the physical DC and be screwed) as in this diagram. Is this actually possible? Does anyone have their setup similar to this?

 

[zag]

No way I would do that, it would produce a massive single fail point for your network.

 

Much better to have 1 or 2 physical servers as DC's.

 

I also keep my fileserver physical as it has so much disk IO.

[Hightower]

No way I would do that, it would produce a massive single fail point for your network.

 

Much better to have 1 or 2 physical servers as DC's.

 

I also keep my fileserver physical as it has so much disk IO.

 

Where's the single fail point?

[zag]

Where's the single fail point?

 

First off I wouldn't trust hyper-V with any DC's myself, I've had them go down for no reason or loose network connection, its just another point of failure to add to a DC in my opinion. By running a DC on a virtual host you are just adding to the things that can go wrong.

 

I think the main concern would be with a failure of the hyper-V holding the Master controller DC, that would mean your couldn't log into the other hyper-v hosts.

[strawberry]

Run at least one dc, even if its a nackered old box. If your vm infrastructure goes down you'll need a dc to recover!.

[maark]

I have one physical DC and one on hyper v.

Never had a problem with hyper v one but as pointed out if your whole hyper v setup went down you could find it tricky to get AD back up.

[Hightower]

Well, I want three DC's on the three new servers. Is it even worth virtualising them then, or am I far better leaving them as physical machines with the Server 2k8 OS directly on them?

[Hightower]

What about this - would this setup be fine?

 

 

I was under the impression that the way I wanted to do it, if I lost a physical host the VM would failover to another host, thus keeping all three DC's up and running. What happens in this new example if I lose the first DC?

 

If you had 3 new servers and a SAN, with ~700 users what would be your ideal setup?

[m25man]

in Blue Peter Fashion,

Here's one I did earlier..

[Hightower]

Good article here:

 

The Domain Controller Dilemma - Virtual PC Guy's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[strawberry]

i'd keep the 3 vm hosts and just get something cheap to run as a dc, Use as many dc's as you need to load balance logons, but its worthwhile having at least one physical and one virtual in case of distaster recovery. prehaps use the physical dc as a backup server as well.