Hyper-V Replica: My Setup

SAMSUNG CSCHi everyone!  Before I get too deep into playing around with Hyper-V Replica using Windows Server 2012 R2, I wanted to share with you my setup.

I’m using my coffee table once again (like I did with my USB 3.0 Tiered Storage SAN), and I’ve created a Hyper-V test infrastructure based on a stack of “heritage” laptops (not new, but Hyper-V capable). 

I have four laptops for now – one is a DC and all of them are running Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V enabled, connected by a single, GigE switch.

I’ve added a couple of VMs to each, and configured them to replicate from their primary host to at least one other host, and to complicate things I’ve Live Migrated some of the VMs from their initial host (HPA) to another host (HPD).

Hopefully the naming conventions make a little sense (they are there mostly for me to keep things straight) – the four host names each end with a different letter (A-D) and the VMs created on each host were named based on the host suffix.  As I mentioned earlier, the VMs initially created on HPA were setup to replicate and then later Live Migrated to another host…why the names of the VMs on HPD don’t match the VMs homed there.

Replica Map

Wow – what a mess of replication I’ve created! 

How could I possibly keep track of it all, as well as effectively monitor replication?

I’ll leave that for subsequent posts.

-John