Moving a Domain Controller VM from one server to another

Question

I have a Hyper-V Virtual Machine that is a Domain Controller, specifically it is our main DC and holds all 5 FSMO roles. If I wanted to move this Virtual Machine to another VM Server than the one it is on currently, is it as simple as taking the .VHD, moving it to another server, and creating a VM in Hyper-V on the new server for it?

Or are there other things to consider that could get screwed up from doing this?

Thanks

Solution

Moving a VM is as simple as exporting using the Hyper-V manager, moving the files to the new server, and importing the VM using Hyper-V manager. There are a quite a few really good instructions on how to do this online.

(I'm assuming you're not moving the VM between clustered hosts, because if you were this wouldn't even be a question.)

The only thing when moving domain controllers is to NEVER TURN ON TWO COPIES, and NEVER TURN ON AN OUTDATED COPY. As soon as you move the VM and start it up, DELETE THE OLD COPY.

Comments

[joeqwerty]

Are you using shared storage between the host machines? Are you using Cluster Shared Volumes? Are the hosts set up in a failover cluster or are they standalone hosts?

[Mike]

ended up not having to do this, but thanks for the help