Edge Show 54 – Failover Cluster Migration to Windows Server 2012

At [05:55] Symon Perriman meets with Rob Hindman, a Program Manager on the Windows Server Clustering & High-Availability team, to talk about migrating Failover Clusters from Windows Server 2008/R2 to Windows Server 2012. Rob first describes the differences between an upgrade and a migration and explains why a migration is required with a distributed system such as a cluster. Next they discuss the concept of "rolling upgrades" and why they have not been supported since Windows Server 2003 due to their high engineering and test costs. Rob then provides an overview of the Cluster Migration Wizard and how it is used to move roles to the new cluster. Next they briefly describe some other cluster migration paths that do not use the Cluster Migration Wizard, such as SQL and Exchange. 

The conversation then focuses on Hyper-V migration between clusters and different options to move your VMs between different versions. At [11:30] Rob demos a VM migration from a Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster to a Windows Server 2012 cluster. In this demo, all the VMs are running on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and we describe how to remap the virtual networks for the VMs when they move to a different set of hosts. Finally, Rob shows the actual migration and how to minimize the downtime for the VMs while they are transferred to the new cluster. For more information, check out the cluster team blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering) and this post on cluster migration: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2012/06/25/10323434.aspx.

News:

• [00:40] Learn about IaaS and private cloud best practices with the Cloud Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT reference architecture: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36795     
• [01:20] Check out the new Windows Server 2012 Base Configuration Lab Test Guide: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29010     
• [T2:10:] See how Microsoft IT is using the hybrid cloud in the IT Showcase on Hybrid Cloud: Microsoft IT's Hybrid Cloud Strategy: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36855     
• [03:05] Learn how to troubleshoot Dynamic Access Control in Windows Server 2012 with the new Understand and Troubleshoot Guide (UTG): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36830     
• [04:20] Three new Management Packs for System Center Operations Manager have been released for Windows Deployment Services, Network Load Balancing and Failover Clustering: http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2013/03/04/new-operations-manager-management-packs-for-cluster-nlb-wds.aspx     

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