Live Migration and Hyper-V Replica

Learn what works and what doesn't work when mixing live migration and Hyper-V Replica.

John Savill

May 6, 2014

1 Min Read
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Q: If I'm using Hyper-V Replica, can I still use live migration?

A: Hyper-V Replica provides asynchronous replication of the virtual hard disks of Hyper-V Replica virtual machines. If a virtual machine is replicated with Hyper-V Replica, can the primary (source) and replica virtual machines still be migrated using live migration or storage migration? The simple answer is yes—with a few considerations, which differ depending on whether you're using Hyper-V Recovery Manager. HRM is Microsoft's Azure-based orchestration engine for Hyper-V Replica management; it hooks into System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

  • Live migrating or storage migrating the primary virtual machine. You can perform live or storage migration of the primary virtual machine between hosts and between clusters with no effect on Hyper-V Replica.

  • Storage migration on the replica virtual machine. This is fully supported and has no effect on Hyper-V Replica.

  • Live migration on the replica virtual machine. Live migration is possible between nodes in the same cluster. However, if you live migrate outside of the cluster or between standalone hosts then replication will break. If you're using HRM, it will detect that the live migration has occurred and will automatically fix the replication. Without HRM, you'd need to manually fix the replication on the primary side by updating the settings for the replication. The new location will be caught up at the next synchronization.

When performing operating system upgrades, always upgrade the replica side first.

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