When Vmware release ESXi 5.1, the ability to migrate VM's from one host to another without having shared storage! Enhanced vMotion/Enhanced Storage vMotion. So yes...two ESXi hosts with only local data store, the VM can be bounced back and forth. However, the VM must be powered down first. Microsoft has Vmware beat here, MS allows running machines to be migrated. Also one must have vCenter installed, configured, and running.
Don't have vCenter but got a project that requires to move a bunch of VM's? No problem! Download and configure the vCenter Server Appliance. A free 60 day trial is included. It is NOT necessary to join it to Active Directory.
Update; with the Web Client one can migrate VM's LIVE across local storage. It cannot be done with the thick/C# client. FWIW, it is greatly faster than Microsoft's Live Migration, at least thus far with out truly doing back to back testing.
Windows 2012 NIC Teaming & Hyper-V
Recently I was repurposing some used servers. Much to my dismay, I am putting Windows 2012 on them for use in a Hyper-V cluster. First issue we noticed is that if you have Server 2012 R2, it cannot be managed by the 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. So instead of loading R2 on these boxes, we are loading R0.
Why are we loading Hyper-V? The answer is MONEY! Vmware has been jacking around there licensing lately, especially for those providers who offer hosting services. They actually charge by the gb of ram allocated! Then Microsoft, gives you free four VM's if you run their Hypervisor. So buy a copy of Windows Enterprise, get four free VMs, on VMware one would have to buy four copies of server. OUCH! Anyways I digress.
I really like the built in network card teaming feature in 2012. The only way I know how to get to it is by the Fisher Price Server Manager. To create a team just click on NIC Teaming, add the NICs, give it a name, choose the type of team one desires (FYI switch Independent seems to work without any configuration changes necessary to the switch.
After that is complete one may notice that the team's status should be a 2gbps connection. One may also notice that the individual NICS now only have the "Multiplexor Protocol" enabled and all the normal protocols such as TCP/IP have moved to the team.
After adding the Hyper-V role, the team gets striped from most of its protocols, a new one is added called 'Hyper-V Extensible Virtual Switch', and a new NIC shows up called VEthernet which has the protocols and IP configuration.
TIP! If you are going to team NICs together for use in Hyper-V and don't have a separate NIC for mgmt. Create the team first, then add in the Hyper-V role. I did it the other way around and had some very strange results.
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