Chapter 13 - High Availability in Hyper-V - Do I know this already?

Question 1

What is the term for replicating to a third host in Hyper-V Replica?

a. Extended (chained) replication
b. Advanced replication
c. Forest-trust replication
d. Three-way replication

Answer 1

a. Extended (chained) replication

Question 2

What options exist for authentication in Hyper-V Replica? Choose two.

a. Kerberos
b. Token-based
c. Certificate-based
d. SCP

Answer 2

a. Kerberos

c. Certificate-based

Question 3

What options for failover exist in Hyper-V Replica? Choose three.

a. Production
b. Test
c. Planned
d. Unplanned

Answer 3

b. Test
c. Planned
d. Unplanned

Question 4

You can perform a live migration between Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2012 R2 if the virtual machine is at least what version?

a. 2
b. 3
c. 4
d. 5

Answer 4

d. 5

Question 5

What live migration authentication option forces the configuration of constrained delegation?

a. SCP
b. Certificate-based
c. Kerberos
d. Token-based

Answer 5

c. Kerberos

Question 6

What PowerShell cmdlet allows you to configure performance options for live migrations?

a. Enable-VMMigration
b. Set-VMMigrationOptions
c. Set-VMHost
d. Set-VMMigrationNetwork

Answer 6

c. Set-VMHost

Question 7

Which of the following is not an example of a component moved in storage migration?

a. Configuration files
b. Virtual machine state
c. Checkpoints
d. Smart paging files

Answer 7

b. Virtual machine state

Question 8

What dramatically simplifies the storage migration process?

a. Ensuring that the move location is within the same geographic location
b. Ensuring that the source VM is stopped
c. Ensuring that the source is not a VHD file
d. Ensuring the use of pass-through disks

Answer 8

b. Ensuring that the source VM is stopped

Question 9

What is a Hyper-V Replica?

Answer 9

A feature that provides replication of virtual machines from one host to another for disaster recovery scenarios.

Question 10

What is Extended (Chained) Replication?

Answer 10

Hyper-V Replica using three hosts.

Question 11

What is Live Migration?

Answer 11

The movement of a virtual machine from one host to another.

Question 12

What is Shared-Nothing Live Migration?

Answer 12

The movement of a virtual machine and its storage from one host to another while not using clustering or shared storage.

Question 13

What is Storage Migration?

Answer 13

The movement of a virtual machine’s files from one host to another.

Question 14

In Hyper-V Manager, what option do you select from the shortcut menu of a virtual machine for Hyper-V Replica?

Answer 14

Enable Replication

Question 15

Name at least three requirements for Live Migration.

Answer 15

• A user account with permission and the Hyper-V role
• source and destination machines in the same AD or that are in trusted domains
• Hyper-V management tools

Question 16

What are two requirements for disks in a storage migration scenario?

Answer 16

• Files must use virtual hard disks

- VMs cannot use pass-through disks.

Question 17

How does Shared-Nothing Live Migration work?

Answer 17

The servers do not need to be part of a cluster, and they do not need access to shared storage.
It’s considered a live and shared migration.
The source server copies the virtual machine’s storage to the destination, in addition to its memory and system state. The source VM remains active until the complete data transfer is complete.

Question 18

What are some key considerations for Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 18

• Hyper-V hosts
• Replication and change tracking
• Extended (chained) replication
• Failover
• Recovery points

Question 19

Why are Hyper- V hosts important when considering Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 19

You can physically co-locate primary and secondary host servers or use separate geographic locations with replication over a WAN link. Hyper-V hosts can be standalone, clustered, or a mixture of both. There is no Active Directory dependency between the servers, and they do not need to be domain members.

Question 20

Why is Replication and Change Tracking important when considering Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 20

When you enable Hyper-V Replica for a specific virtual machine, initial replication creates an identical replica virtual machine on a secondary host server. Hyper-V Replica then uses change tracking and creates and maintains a log file that captures changes on a virtual machine VHD. The log file plays in reverse order to the replica VHD, based on replication frequency settings; thus, the latest changes store and replicate asynchronously. Replication is over HTTP or HTTPS.

Question 21

Why is Extended (chained) replication important when considering Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 21

This type of replication allows the replication of a virtual machine from a primary host to a secondary host and then the replication of the secondary host to a third host. You cannot replicate from the primary host directly to the second and the third. This feature makes Hyper-V Replica more robust for disaster recovery because if an outage occurs, you can recover with both the primary and extended replicas. You can also fail over to the extended replica if your primary and secondary locations fail. You should note that the extended replica does not support application-consistent replication and must use the same VHDs that the secondary replica uses.

Question 22

Why is Failover important when considering Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 22

If an outage occurs in your primary location (or secondary, in the case of extended replication), you can manually start a test, planned or unplanned failover.

Question 23

Why are Recovery points important when considering Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 23

When you configure replication settings for a virtual machine, you specify the recovery points you want to store from the virtual machine. A recovery point is a snapshot in time from which you can recover a virtual machine. You lose less data if you recover from a very recent recovery point. You can access recovery points up to 24 hours in the past

Question 24

What are some important prerequisites for Hyper-V Replicas?

Answer 24

• To conserve network bandwidth, you should exclude VHDs that hold rapidly changing data and data not used by the replica server after failover (for example, page file disks)
• Determine the synchronization schedule: The data on the replica server synchronizes per the replication frequency you configure. Options might be 30 seconds, 5 minutes, or 15 minutes
• Decide how to recover data: By default, Hyper-V Replica stores only a single recovery point. This is the latest replication sent from the primary server to the secondary server. However, if you want the choice to recover data to an earlier point in time, you can specify that more recovery points be stored (to a maximum of 24 hourly points). Having additional recovery points requires more overhead on processing and storage resources
• Determine workloads to replicate: Remember that standard Hyper-V Replica replication maintains state for a VM after failover, but it does not maintain the state of applications running inside that VM. For this type of recovery of your workload state, you create app-consistent recovery points. Note that app-consistent recovery is not available on the extended replica site if you are using extended (chained) replication.
• Determine the initial replication of virtual machine data: Replication starts by transferring the current state of the virtual machines. This first state is transmitted directly over the existing network, and this occurs either at once or a later time that you configure. You can also use a preexisting restored virtual machine as the initial copy. Or you can save network bandwidth by copying the initial copy to external media and then physically delivering the media to the replica site. If you want to use a preexisting virtual machine, delete all previous snapshots associated with it.

Question 25

What are some important things to consider when devising a synchronization schedule for Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 25

• Are the virtual machines running critical data with a low recovery point objective (RPO)? The RPO is the maximum targeted period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident.
• What are your bandwidth considerations?
• ## Are your VMs highly critical? Highly critical virtual machines need more frequent replication.

Question 26

How do you configure Hyper-V replicas?

Answer 26

Step 1. In the Hyper-V settings for the server to which you replicate virtual machines, under Replication Configuration, select Enable this computer as a Replica server
Step 2. For authentication, Select Use Kerberos (HTTP) or Use certificate- based Authentication (HTTPS).
Step 3. For authorization, select Allow replication from any authenticated server to allow the replica server to accept virtual machine replication traffic from any primary server that authenticates successfully or select Allow replication from the specified servers to accept traffic only from the primary servers you specifically select.
Step 4. Click OK.
Step 5. To allow replication between the primary and secondary servers, allow traffic through the Windows firewall

Question 27

What are three types of failover?

Answer 27

• Test failover
• Planned failover
• Unplanned failover

Question 28

What is a Test failover?

Answer 28

If you want to run a test failover, right-click the primary virtual machine and select Replication > Test Failover. Pick the latest or another recovery point, if configured. A new test virtual machine is created and started on the secondary site. After you have finished testing, select Stop Test Failover on the replica virtual machine. Note that for a virtual machine, you can only run one test failover at a time.

Question 29

What is a Planned failover?

Answer 29

To run a planned failover, right-click the primary virtual machine and select Replication > Planned Failover. Planned failover performs prerequisite checks to ensure zero data loss. It involves checking that the primary virtual machine is shut down before beginning the failover. After the virtual machine is failed over, the failover process starts replicating the changes back to the primary site when it is available. Note that for this to work, the primary server should be configured to receive replication from the secondary server or from the Hyper-V Replica Broker, in the case of a primary cluster. Planned failover sends the last set of tracked changes.

Question 30

What is an Unplanned failover?

Answer 30

To run an unplanned failover, right-click on the replica virtual machine and select Replication > Unplanned Failover from Hyper-V Manager or Failover Clustering Manager. You can recover from the latest recovery point or from previous recovery points if this option is enabled. After failover, check that everything is working as expected on the failed-over virtual machine and then click Complete on the replica virtual machine.

Question 31

What are some requirements of Live Migration?

Answer 31

• A user account with permission to perform the various steps: Membership in the local Hyper-V Administrators group or the Administrators group on both the source and destination computers meets this need, unless you are configuring constrained delegation. Membership in the Domain Administrators group is required to configure constrained delegation.
• The Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2016 installed on the source and destination servers: You can do a live migration between hosts running Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2012 R2 if the virtual machine is at least version 5. The systems must be connected to the same virtual switch, and these systems must have the same brand of processor.
• Source and destination computers: These computers must either belong to the same Active Directory domain or belong to domains that trust each other.
• Hyper-V management tools: The Hyper-V management tools must be installed on a computer running Windows Server 2016 or Windows 10, unless the tools are installed on the source or destination servers and you plan to run the tools from the server.

Question 32

How do you configure live migration in Hyper-V manager?

Answer 32

To configure live migration in Hyper-V Manager, follow these steps:
Step 1. Open Hyper-V Manager and from Server Manager, select Tools > Hyper-V Manager.
Step 2. In the Navigation pane, select one of your servers.
Step 3. In the Action pane, select Hyper-V Settings > Live Migrations.
Step 4. In the Live Migrations pane, check Enable incoming and outgoing live migrations.
Step 5. Under Simultaneous live migrations, specify a different number if you do not want to use the default of 2.
Step 6. Under Incoming live migrations, if you want to use specific network connections to accept live migration traffic, click Add to type the IP address information. Otherwise, click Use any available network for live migration and click OK.
Step 7. To choose Kerberos and performance options, expand Live Migrations and then select Advanced Features.
Step 8. If you have configured constrained delegation, under Authentication protocol, select Kerberos.
Step 9. Under Performance options, review the details and choose a different option if it is appropriate for your environment and click OK.
Step 10. Select your other server in Hyper-V Manager and repeat these steps.

Question 33

What cmdlets are used for Live Migration in Powershell?

Answer 33

• Enable-VMMigration
• Set-VMMigrationNetwork
• Set-VMHost

Question 34

What process of steps does Storage migration follow?

Answer 34

1. The destination server creates new virtual hard disk files of sizes and types corresponding to those on the source server.
2. The VM on the source server continues to operate using its local files, but Hyper- V begins mirroring disk writes to the destination server as well.
3. While continuing to mirror writes, Hyper-V on the source server initiates a single-pass copy of the source disks to the destination; blocks that have already been written to the destination by the mirroring process are skipped.
4. When the single-pass copy is completed, and with the mirrored writes continuing, Hyper-V updates the VM configuration and begins working from the files on the destination server.
5. Once the VM is running successfully from the migrated files, Hyper-V deletes the source files.