Home Forums Virtualizing AC for seamless failover - Windows 2012, Hyper V, Replica

I am budding off this thread from the dream network thread so I can get advice and comments on my new project. As suggested by Sandeep, virtualization is the wave of the future (present?). It looks like slater is already doing it, and GoBruins has already experimented. The Replica piece is my goal.

I am wading into the virtualization pool for the first time so would love some guidance from experts. So here it goes.

Current State: IBM x3200 M3 Xeon Quad-Core 2.40GHz 1333 MHz RAM 8GB 4X1TB running as 2 RAID-1, running SBS 2008 as host to AC, Exchange, SharPoint

Future State: above hardware running Windows Server 2012, virtual Hyper V machine running SBS 2008 for above; duplicate machine (which I have) running same, synchronized to main machine with Replica.

Since I already have the spare hardware, I can get started. I intend to download Windows 2012 and set it up. I have done some reading, primarily on Technet and MVA. However, I have some remaining question that have not been answered.

The first question is whether I can just restore from the current setup's backup to the new virtual machine, or do I have to set up a new SBS 2008?

The second question is the network configuration. I gather that the working network is going to be controlled by the main virtual machine. Assuming that I don't move the replica machine off site, can the replica machine be in the same domain? Does it matter?

Thank you.

Just a followup on my project. I finally installed Windows Server 2012 on the new IBM server. This is the server I held in reserve so I could use it to restore the other server, so I only tried it on a bare bones restore. It turns out I needed new drivers for RAID for W2K12. Hours of fiddling later, ow the server works!

Next step: install Hyper V, then an instance of Windows Server 2008 R2. Then I intend to install AC 6.0.9 on the 2008, and then restore my practice database on it. I will then make that the active database, and upgrade it to 6.5 when available for general release.

I will then make the old server W2K12 as well, and restore my current SBS2008 onto it, but not running AC.

Then onto replica AC.

Questions for gurus:

1) On the new 2008R2, I intend to designate a drive for AC alone, let's say E:. How do I tell AC to install onto that instead of c:\Program Files?

2) On the second W2K12, is it easy to restore SBS2008 to it? Do I have to make the same drive designations first?

3) The whole purpose of the exercise was to replicate AC. I intend to install another Windows 2008 virtual machine to run the replica AC. Can I put that on the same server that runs the virtual SBS which runs AD, exchange, and SharePoint? Or Should I put it on a separate W2K12 server?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Before I begin, let me say this: If you are totally new at this game, you need to practice on a test server first. Do not attempt this on your live data if you have never done this before. Seek professional help if you have any doubts. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS ON YOUR LIVE SERVER UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE FULL BACKUPS STANDING BY THAT YOU KNOW FOR A FACT WORK BECAUSE YOU HAVE TESTED THEM BY RESTORING TO ANOTHER SERVER.


The first thing you need to do is defrag your hard drive at least three times to move data to the front of the drive.

Next, resize the Windows' volume drive to make it at least 30GB smaller than the size of the physical volume it is sitting on. You do this using the disk management tool in computer management. You should have your Windows C drive and an un-partitioned space of 30GB when you are done.

Now use the following tool to make a VHD copy of your server to a USB hard disk. When done you will have a big VHD file that can now be mounted as a virtual machine.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

Once the VHD file is created, you can re-format and install Windows Server 2012. Install the Hyper-V role.

Copy the VHD file over to the server from the USB drive.

Create a new virtual machine and specify that VHD file as that virtual machine's hard drive.

You should now be able to boot the virtual machine.

---------

Be aware I am leaving out a TON of details. I cannot cover every detail in a simple post on a forum. Please read about Hyper-V and do a few test runs on your test server.

As for having a replica, that ability is built in to Windows Server 2012.

JamesNT

Not worth the effort.


See my previous post.


Bing the hyper-v replica abilities of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

JamesNT

James, thank you for your answer.

I did install Server 2008 as a virtual machine on W2K12 and moved Amazing Charts onto it, so at least the mission critical stuff would work no matter what I do to the SBS.

Then I will try your above procedure to virtualize the SBS. Since I did test bare metal restore for the SBS before, I figure the worst I can do if I mess up virtualizing the SBS is to restore it to the the physical server and start over.

I guess in my mind I was going to do a bare metal restore onto the virtual machine, primarily because I have three physical drives on current SBS server and restore will bring back the old configuration. In using Disk2vhd, I guess I will be imaging the C: drive only. As long as the rest of the drives only hold data, I guess I can just copy them over later. I don't remember putting any programs on those two other drives.

I am still stuck on whether I should host the replica AC machine on the same W2K12 server that hosts the SBS. I guess I should be able to, since it's a small clinic with a few people for the SBS needs, and the replica is just sitting there replicating. I know the specs say W2K12 can host multiple VMs if I have enough memory (and hard disk space). I was more concerned about what people do in the real world. I will Bing it.

Thanks again.

James is correct. Not much of an improvement. Although I seem to recall Sandeep mentioning it.
But, just to answer your question, when you install AC (and this is true of most installers), the default is C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) depending on whether you are installing 32-bit or 64-bit. Somewhere during the install, it will show the path of where it will install the program. You can change that to wherever you wish.

Yes, thank you.

I was initially confused because when I first tried to install AC 6.0.9 on a fresh W2K12, it did not give me any options. That install did not work anyhow. However, on subsequent W2008 installs it did ask me where I wanted to install AC to.

It's important to me to be able to install to the same drive and directory, because the restore of the AC on a new machine was not perfect if I installed in a different directory structure than the original (on SBS2008), especially since I seem to have to copy imported items separately (saving ENC with imports times out, despite repairs to database). Even so, the first restore on the new virtual machine did not complete, with a non-helpful message (Restore not completed due to errors). However, the restore did complete and worked for the subsequent day ENC.