Windows 2012

Configuring Windows 2012 HyperV replication

Posted on by Computer

Windows 2012 includes a fantastic new feature that provides redundancy and the ability to quickly failover a virtual machine from one HyperV server to another

  • The HyperV replica server can either be on your local network or off-site for site disaster recovery.
  • For offsite replication you will want to ensure you have a high bandwidth internet connection with large data limit as the initial replication particularly will require the size of the entire virtual machine to be uploaded.
  • Alternatively you can take a copy of the vhdx’s and manually load them onto the offsite system first before starting replication
  • the server replicates every five minutes which minimises data loss

Configuring the HyperV servers

  • First of all you need to configure application on the HyperV servers.
  • Right click on the HyperV server under HyperV manager and go to replication configuration.
  • If replicating across a local network security is not such an issue so you can simply use Kerberos on port 80. If replicating over the Internet you may want to use https to secure transmissions.
  • the data being send is not in the form of raw documents that could be sniffed, but rather uses shadow copy incremental changes to the disk to update the replica image. It would be next to impossible to obtain any useful information without first getting a copy of the initial replica so even in this situation Kerberos HTTP
  • Check on Enable this computer as a replica server and use Kerberos
  • under authorisation and storage set whether their specific servers you want to replicate from or allow replication from any authenticated server

configuration

  • You will receive a prompt to remind you to allow port 80 in the firewall

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  • open windows firewall

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  • Under the Inbound Rules right click on Hyper-V replica HTTP listener and enable rule

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  • Complete the same set up on any other HyperV servers to have the virtual machines replicated.
  • You can have the virtual machines replicated to multiple onsite and off-site systems for local and remote failovers

Replicating the virtual machine

  • In HyperV manager right click on the virtual machine you want to replicate and Enable replication

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  • Specify the replica server address

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