In this blog post I thought it would be fun to share how we migrated a customer environment from one Hyper-V Failover Cluster to another with Zero Downtime using Shared Nothing Live Migration.

The image below was some chicken scratch I drafted up during a meeting with the customer showing how we could do this.

I often tell people that I get paid to draw with crayons and see it really is true.

I hope you enjoy.

Dave

Shared Nothing Live Migration from Hyper-V Cluster to another Hyper-V Cluster (Without Down Time)

In this solution you will be able to migrate Virtual Machines between two Hyper-V Clusters without down time using Shared Nothing Live Migration. The steps below outline the process required to achieve these results.

Prerequisites

Infrastructure Servers Requirements

Migration Steps – Reverting to Standalone Virtual Machine from Highly Available

1. Login to the Source Hyper-V Cluster and open Failover Cluster Manager
2. Expand Cluster and select Roles.
3. Right-click on the Source Virtual Machine and select Remove

    

Migration Steps – Using Shared Nothing Live Migration to move the Virtual Machine to the target CSV Volume

1. Open Hyper-V Manager and Right-click on the Source Virtual Machine that was removed from the cluster in the steps above and select Move.
2. On the Before You Begin page, click Next.
3. On the Choose Move type page, select Move the virtual machine and then click Next.
4. On the Specify Destination Computer page, click Browse...
5. Type the server name of the Target Cluster Node, click Check Names and click OK.
6. Click Next on the Specify Destination Computer page.
7. On the Choose Move Options page, select Move the virtual machine’s data to a signal location, click Next.
8. Click Browse on the Choose a new location for virtual machine page.
9. Click C drive and Select ClusterStorage folder.
10. Select the desired destination Cluster Shared Volume and click Select Folder.
11. Click Next on the Choose a new location for virtual machine page.
12. On the Summary page, review and make sure all of information are correct and then click Finish.

Migration Steps – Making the Virtual Machine Highly Available on the new Hyper-V Failover Cluster

1. Login to the Target node of the new Hyper-V Failover Cluster.

1. Open Failover Cluster Manager.
2. Expand Cluster and select Roles.
3. On the Action pane, select Configure Role.
4. On the Before You Begin page, click Next.
5. On the Select Role page, select Virtual Machines and then click Next.
6. Select the virtual machine which you would like to add it to the new cluster, click Next.
7. Click Next on the Confirmation page.
8. On Summary page, click Finish.