Specifications

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013
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Figure 26: Live migration with Hyper-V
In addition to improvements made with the Live Migration feature, Windows Server 2012 now allows the
live migration of virtual machine storage—independent of the virtual machine itself and without any
downtime. This is known as live storage migration and can be initiated using the Hyper-V Manager
console, Failover Cluster console, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) console, or
PowerShell. This capability can be used in several scenarios, including the need to redistribute virtual
machine storage when disk space runs low or the need to perform maintenance on underlying storage
without disrupting the virtual machine. Live storage migration for .vhd and .vhdx disks can be performed
on standalone Hyper-V servers and clustered Hyper-V servers. Live storage migrations cannot be used
with pass-through disks.
Windows Server 2012 also implements shared-nothing live migration, which helps in migrating virtual
machines using just a network cable without any downtime. Shared-nothing live migration works in
conjunction with live migration and live storage migration. First the storage is live migrated. Once the live
storage migration completes, the state of the virtual machines is copied and synchronized between the
source and destination servers over the network.