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Q. How do I create a clustered Hyper-V virtual machine (VM)?
John Savill
August 11, 2008
1 Min Read
A. To cluster-enable a VM, you need several Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition installations that are part of a failover cluster and have shared storage available. (Failover clustering is included in Server 2008 Enterprise Edition.) The shared storage stores the VM's hard disks.
Before you can cluster-enable a VM, ensure that it's turned off (i.e., not in a start state) and that in addition to the configuration storage, the hard disks are stored on cluster storage (so that the VM can move between cluster nodes).
Open the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Failover Cluster Management snap-in, and carry out the following steps:
Open the Services and Applications menu.
Select Configure a Service or Application.
Click Next to start the High Availability Wizard.
Select Select Service or Application from the right pane, then select Virtual Machine from the Select the service or application that you want to configure for high availability menu, as the following figure shows.
The next window displays a list of the VMs running on cluster nodes. Select the VM you want to cluster-enable, as the following figure shows (the sandbox server is selected), and click Next.
Confirm that the correct VM will be cluster-enabled, then click Next.
Click Next to finish the wizard.
The following figure shows sample output of the VM cluster-enabling process:
Now, you can start the cluster-enabled VM. If you stop the VM while it isn't part of a failover cluster, the VM will automatically restart. To stop a clustered VM, you need to take the VM offline. The following figure shows the sandbox VM Failover Cluster Management screen, which you would use to take the sandbox VM offline.
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