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We are planning of running 2 critical services in VM's on Hyper-V in Server 2008 RTM then plan to move to R2 in October. Is it easy to migrate VM's between versions and obviously how?

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The VHD file format between the 2 versions are the same and direct upgrading is fully supported. We have done this with 3 production machines from Hyper-V 2008 to Hyper-V 2008 B2/RC and now RTM. We reinstall the OS and just keep the VHD's.

We recreate the configuration each time mainly to make sure we don't miss any new features. Once done upgrade the Integration Services and all should be well.

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So maybe I don't understand something, are you running multiple VMs and sharing the same VHD? Your comment "We reinstall the OS and just keep the VHD's" was sorta confusing to me! – Breadtruck Aug 19 '09 at 11:18
Sorry. We have one scenario where we do have a base VM but that's for a testing of functionality purpose. We format the OS drives on the boxes and delete the VM configuration. We then later attach the VHD back and recreate the VM configuration. – Diago Aug 19 '09 at 11:24
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See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/migration-paths.aspx

I upgraded my servers running Windows Server 2008 Standard / with hyper-v to Server 2008 R2 with 0 problems. One was Sp1 and the other was sp2. Anyway the VMs after the upgrade ran just fine. I would definitely make backups of the VM and VHD files. I had messed up my original VM install which was running R2 RC, so I just created a new one and installed a fresh load of R2 from an iso, mounted on the virtual cdrom. Installing an OS in the VM is such a piece of cake, I actually enjoyed doing an install for the first time in a long time.

I believe that you will likely have no problems, just backup before you start.

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I believe he was saying Server 2008 RTM as in, not SP2. – MDMarra Aug 19 '09 at 11:08
I guess you could be right, when he used "planning" I kind of thought he was using R2 RTM already. If your right then I would say maybe not, update that machine to SP2 before, what do you think? – Breadtruck Aug 19 '09 at 11:14
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I have upgraded 3 servers

  • 2 from 2k8 SP1 => SP2 => R2 RC => R2 RTM
  • 1 from 2k8 SP2 => R2 RTM

The VM's have only been powered down during the host OS upgrades

All the VM's had the HyperV Integration Components upgraded after the host OS was upgraded.

I have had no problems at all on any of the 3 servers and the VM's they host.

So to recap:

  • Power down your VHD's and make a backup just incase
  • Upgrade your host OS
  • Repower on your VM's
  • Upgrade the IC within each of your VM's
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