VMware migration requires familiarity with eight Hyper-V management functions (1)

If you are a VMware administrator trying to understand Microsoft Hyper-V, you should start from learning important Hyper-V management terms.

Many Hyper-V features are the same as those of VMware, which makes it easier for administrators to extend their vSphere architecture knowledge to Microsoft's virtualization platform. The following are functional terms of Hyper-V. VMware administrators should be familiar with Hyper-V before implementing it.

VC Server = VM Console

Both VMware and Microsoft have a set of management tools. Take vSphere as an example. The management platform is a combination of the vCenter Client of the vCenter Server Client ). Hyper-V's management platform is the virtual machine console SCVMM), which includes server and client components.

Without the assistance of the SCVMM hypervisor, you can complete many basic Hyper-V management tasks, including cluster management. It doesn't matter if you do not have the SCVMM license, you can use the Hyper-V console, which can be started from the service console or on Windows 7, which is a remote system management tool RSAT). You can even use the cluster failover tool to manage Windows system cluster failover, which is a very important feature provided by Hyper-V. This is also implemented by RSAT on each host.

VMware cluster = Windows Cluster failover

The first feature of the virtual cluster service is high availability. Both vSphere and Hyper-V require the host to connect to the LUN on the logical unit of the shared storage, and the virtual disks of each virtual machine VM must be stored on the shared storage. If the preceding conditions are met, the virtual machine on the cluster can be successfully transferred if a host fails, which also makes it easy to change the load of the balanced virtual machine.

The above is the same point. Next we will introduce a very important difference. The vSphere cluster technology is designed only for itself, and Hyper-V implements clusters through the Windows Common System failover function. This function module also supports other applications, such, DHCP, file Server, SQL Server, etc. Therefore, a host cluster managed by Hyper-V needs to focus on these applications at the same time. SCVMM 2012 is currently in the testing stage) may reduce the complexity of managing Hyper-V clusters.

VMware vMotion = Hyper-V online migration

After a cluster is created for hosts connected to shared storage, You can migrate virtual machines between hosts online without shutting down the virtual machines. This is online migration. VSphere calls it VMware VMotion, and Hyper-V is called online migration. Hyper-V provides this function starting with Windows Server 2008 R2. The migration process for these two platforms is similar.

VMware HA = high availability of virtual machines

Both platforms provide high-availability cluster technology and their functions are very similar. VMware HA and Hyper-V high availability despite the difficulty of using Hyper-V to build clusters) both provide limited or no downtime failover technology. However, we need to pay more attention to the differences between the two companies in terms of failover Capacity estimation.

When either of the two platforms goes down, the virtual machines running on them will also be shut down. Therefore, it is very important to determine where the faulty virtual machine is suitable for re-running. VSphere and Hyper-V are definitely different in their processing.

In the current version of Hyper-V and SCVMM, the administrator can preset a host on the Windows Cluster failover console that allows the virtual machine to restart, so that the virtual machine will follow this policy in the event of a fault. However, this requires manual configuration, so it is a challenge for administrators who manage large-scale clusters.

SCVMM does not design capacity planning for virtual machines within the cluster, but vSphere does. This feature reserves redundant resources for started virtual machines, which is also the reason why vSphere clusters can continue to run for a long time. Similar features are expected to be added to SCVMM 2012 to support Hyper-V high availability capacity planning.