A couple of weeks ago I wrote “3 Easy Steps to Migrate to Hyper-V 2012 R2” talking about how to migrate VM’s from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2. Since then I keep hearing the same question over and over again.
Question: When you migrate VMs from Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 to Hyper V in Windows Server 2012 R2 can you also automate conversion from vhd to vhdx? And can it be done with minimum interruption to the operation of the workload of the VM?
Answer: YES!
Our friends Aidan Finn and Didier Von Hoye are using a really cool PowerShell script to automate the entire process. The only challenge here is how to accomplish the virtual disk conversion without interrupting the operation of the workload on the VM. The solution is really simple. Last year Veeam Backup & Replication V7 introduced the Virtual Lab functionality for Hyper-V which is the perfect fit for this situation.
Virtual lab provides a mechanism to construct an exact duplicate of your Hyper-V environment (exact right down to the IP addresses of the VMs) and run it in an isolated stub network attached to your production network. Once the lab is in place you can now do all kinds of cool testing and development stuff, including but not limited to migrating from vhd to vhdx files, without having to shut down the production VMs. If you are not familiar with the Veeam virtual lab – you should take the time to give it a look. This is made for a backup recovery verification technique by going through the restore process on a scheduled basis, but also as a good mechanism to test changes such as Windows Update or Domain Schema changes. The figure below shows two VMs in a Veeam Virtual Lab:
Once the conversion from vhd to vhdx is complete you can execute a controlled migration or just run a VM recovery to get the VM’s into the production environment. You will still need to shut down the old .vhd based VM’s before recovering the vhdx versions but there will be minimum interruption of the infrastructure workloads. It’s a great solution!
Once again Microsoft (with 2 awesome MVP’s) and Veeam working together to make things better in your virtual environment! Have you gone about converting to vhdx files yet? If so, what tips can you share about the process? If not, does this help you get there? Share your comments below.