Moving Virtual Machines from one host to another on Hyper-V

As you all know, without SCVMM, moving VMs manually (for example when doing an upgrade of a server or rebuilding a cluster etc) is not just a copy and paste scenario. A good friend of mine; John Kadianos from Hyper Technologies (www.hypert.com) shared the steps he uses the other day with me… I thought I would share them with you:

Here are the steps to manually move the VM from one host to another.

1)      Shutdown the VM

2)      Copy the VHD from source host to destination host

3)      Create a VM on the destination host without a hard drive (attach the hard drive later)

4)      Move the VM VHD file to this newly created VM’s folder

5)      Attach the VHD file with newly created VM from Hyper-V manager (browse to the VHD file which you moved)

6)      Turn on the VM > logon

7)      Start > run > CMD (type these commands in the same order) > 1. “set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1” > 2. “start devmgmt.msc” (it will open up the device manager) > click on “VIEW” in menu > select SHOW HIDDEN DEVICES > uninstall any greyed out VMBUS network adaptor

NOTE: if you use export/import feature, this all be taken care of automatically, make sure that you have the same virtual Network card name on destination server as the source server. Network configuration is critical here whether copying manually or via the import/export utility.

Let me know if you out there have any tips and tricks you use..

Enjoy!