How can we increase the high availability of non-shared real-time migration?

The concept of virtual machine migration between physical machines is one of the keys to virtualization sales. Patches, hardware loss, and Configuration updates are no longer subject to Windows terminals and bad hard drives. Reliability can be achieved without costly dedicated hardware.

But there is a warning: shared storage. Instead of any shared storage, it is fast shared storage, which is often a high-end iSCSI NAS or fiber-channel SAN solution. "Fast" means expensive and not always needed. Of course, the best performance comes from SAN. However, small businesses or remote offices will think it is a tool for killing chickens.

The latest version of hypervisors is based on the "no sharing" concept and has nothing to do with storage and clusters. This means that it is feasible to use an internal hard disk for local storage and migrate virtual machines between two hosts.

VMware recently released ESXi 5.0 to integrate non-shared data into vMotion. However, VMware requires a certain level of permission to use this function. In addition, Hyper-V has enabled any server running Hyper-V 3.0.

Shared storage will still achieve fast and efficient real-time migration. This is similar to migrating virtual hard disk files of hundreds of millions of bytes, not just memory content. Flexibility is a major advantage of no sharing. You don't need to allocate more SAN storage or purchase expensive solutions, which also brings high availability to your small businesses. You can choose to use Hyper-V for real-time migration instead of worrying about shared disks. We only need to weigh the speed and Configuration Requirements before you start.

How to share without sharing

The basic principle is that all Hypervisor hosts must access the same storage logical unit number. When the original host releases the VM, when the VM's memory data is transferred through real-time migration, the other host simply takes over the virtual hard disk (VHD) file. Therefore, you need to configure hosts in the same group so that they can know each other's resources.

If you do not want to use shared storage for migration, or the host does not belong to a cluster, you need to turn off the power and migrate the server. Previously, this is actually a file copy process, so it requires enough downtime. Now, when the VM is online, Hyper-V places the entire disk on the network without any cluster members or any shared storage types.

Hyper-V uses some smart storage techniques to implement this function. When the VHD is replicated in the network, any read/write requests from the disk come from the source disk. Any changes are recorded. Once the replication is complete, the update will write the source and target VHD files. After the synchronization is completed, Hyper-V keeps the VMS copied on the target host online and deletes the source VHD.

Implement real-time migration without sharing

Real-time migration without sharing is much easier than shared volumes. In fact, all you need is two or more Hyper-V 2012 (or dedicated Server or role running on Windows Server 2012) servers, with the same series of processors (Intel or AMD), connect to the same Active Directory domain. In any virtual environment, the network is critical, but you will enjoy fast network connection when using real-time migration without sharing. Provides a connection of no less than 1 Gb, preferably a private network dedicated for real-time migration.

The storage units on the virtual machine can be locally attached to the NT File System (NTFS) disk, which can be SAN or shared with standard SMB 3.0 files. You cannot use a penetrating disk. Virtual hard disks must be used, which is required in any real-time migration scenario. When file sharing is used, file sharing must be visible to the source and target hosts.

For real-time migration in a cluster, why do we need to use non-shared real-time migration instead of SAN? Remember, these machines are not aggregated, so they do not share those storage even on a dedicated storage network. This is necessary when migrating virtual machines to new storage or hosts in the new cluster for load distribution.

Verify Real-Time Migration

Once these conditions are met, you need to check the settings on Hyper-V to "enable real-time transfer of incoming and outgoing data ." Available. Set your authentication options here to allow the number of simultaneous real-time migration (previously only set to 1) and IP addresses that allow real-time migration.

Certificate is an important issue. Any administrator who wants to remotely manage these servers should select Kerberos authentication. The server must match the authentication type with the computer account.

Some settings are required for the certificate. Server 1 needs to delegate Server 2 as Microsoft's virtual system migration service, and vice versa. If you plan to migrate from file sharing, you also need the public Internet File System (CIFS) service. You can access authorization tags and enable computer object attributes from the Active Directory users and the computer console.

Migrate virtual machines

After configuring the certificate and network, use the NIC. For security and speed, it is best to use a private network space to start your VM migration journey.

The mobile wizard can help you select the target hyper-v server. You can choose to move the snapshot to VHD or a different location, or put it in a place. Once you select the target folder, the Migration starts. The speed of movement depends on the VM and memory size, and also on the network.