Introduction

Microsoft has done a very good job with Windows 2012 and its new version of Hyper-V. Most of the new and cool features such as Storage Migration, Hyper-V Replica, Hyper-V Extensible Switch, and many more, focus on virtualization, increasing mobility, scalability, and reliability of your datacenters. With all of them together, we can now say that Windows Server 2012 provides the ultimate private cloud operating system. This means that you will have more flexibility, automation, and better management of virtual and physical servers, in creating your local private cloud infrastructure.

Having said that, the migration plan of the existing environment will still happen. You will probably want to start using all these features. However, the upgrade process needs attention, planning, and special configurations.

With Hyper-V 3 virtual machines, upgrades, and migrations are easier than never before. You can migrate the Virtual Machine (VM) from old Hyper-V versions using the Export/Import feature, move the VM storage of a running VM using Storage migration, or move the VMs on the fly using Shared Nothing Live migration between two Hyper-V servers and a network connection.

This chapter will show you everything you need in the following tasks to make sure you have an easy and a successful upgrade to the new Windows and Hyper-V versions.