HYPER-V Migrations

Migrating servers is not new; for years, IS professionals have been migrating servers from one piece of hardware to another. Let us face it; we are not quite to the point of hardware life cycles matching up with software life cycles, so there is a really good chance that the brand-new enterprise application you are implementing today will outlive the server platform it is being deployed on; anybody supporting legacy applications knows this well. The introduction of virtualization to the mainstream began to change the rules. Of course, nobody wants to jump right in and be the first to move revenue-generating powerhouse applications to a virtual environment, no matter how hard our inner geek is screaming for us to do so. So starting in the late 1990s, IS professionals began to use virtual environments for testing—not just for applications, but the virtualization technology itself. In its infancy, virtualization technology simply did not allow for migrating existing platforms into the virtual world; as a result, over the years, we all became very fluent at building virtual servers and workstations from scratch. Of course, this process evolved into creating templates or prestaging copies of virtual operating systems that could be implemented within minutes. It was only a matter of time before the technology would catch up to the desire to import an existing physical server platform into the virtual world. We are now on the cusp of flawless migrations of physical server platforms into the virtual world, and doing so seamlessly while the server is in use by end users, without impacting performance.

In the brave new world of using virtualization to support frontline production operations, the upper echelon of management is looking to their own engineers and trusted vendors to provide the confidence and expertise needed to begin moving more toward not only data center virtualization but also a truly dynamic data center environment. You should expect hesitation in the discussions to implement production supporting virtualization; there is a mind-set obstacle that many managers need to overcome when it comes to the use of virtualization. Managers comment on preferring a “real” server over a virtual platform. For some it is as simple as preferring to have a solid object to visualize in their mind, whereas others simply have skepticism about the technology itself. Regardless of the reasoning, your design should be written in a way to accommodate and address all concerns. Your approach needs to be focused on accomplishing your goals in a feasible, appropriate way. Do not virtualize for the sake of virtualizing.

Microsoft calls out some specific best practices when migrating specialized server platforms. Familiarize yourself with these best practices thoroughly before attempting to migrate any of the specialty servers.

Source of Information : Elsevier-Microsoft Virtualization Master Microsoft Server Desktop Application and Presentation