One of the most significant new features in Windows Server 2012 is the Hyper-V Replica (HVR) capability. Hyper-V Replicas make it possible to copy Hyper-V virtual machines across a LAN or WAN even if you don’t have a failover cluster or shared storage between the virtual machines. Hyper-V fault tolerance and disaster recovery are therefore cheaper and simpler than ever before.
HVR allows you to designate a remote host to which a Hyper-V virtual machine is replicated. Once the replication relationship has been established and the initial replication has occurred, writes to the source virtual machine (VM) are collected in a log file and sent asynchronously to the destination VM on a designated schedule. Because the writes are “deltas” (i.e., differences), the bandwidth may not be prohibitive, even across a WAN link, although some initial monitoring is probably advisable. Because the replication is asynchronous, a link with variable latency does not present problems.
Comparing HVR to failover clusters, the requirements for HVR are less onerous. Basically all you need is Server 2012 or Server 2012 R2 on the Hyper-V hosts, and hardware that supports Hardware-Assisted Virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) as well as Data Execution Prevention (DEP) — that is to say, just about any server built in the last few years. Note that although Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) is required for Client Hyper-V on Windows 8.x, this CPU technology (included for example in Intel i3, i5, and i7 processors) is not required for the server flavor of Hyper-V, even though it should improve performance. Note also that you do not need identical hardware for the primary and replica servers.
HVR technology does not guarantee that there will be zero data loss in all circumstances, as there could be some data loss in the “unplanned failover” situation. However, no data loss occurs in the “test failover” and “planned failover” scenarios.
HVR host machines do not need to be in the same domain, and they can even be workgroup machines. As of mid-2014, they can also be in the Microsoft cloud. Initially you had to have System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), but at the very end of 2014, Microsoft opened up Azure-based replication to non-System-Center customers, calling it “Disaster Recovery to Azure for Branch offices.”
To learn more about Hyper-V Replica, check out my white paper called Hyper-V Replicas in Windows Server 2012.
Related Courses
Administering Windows Server 2012 (M20411)
MCSA: Windows Server 2012 Boot Camp
Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center (M20409)