Setting up Hyper-V 2012 Replication on Workgroup Servers: A Guide

Hyper-V is a virtualization solution from Microsoft designed to create and operate virtual machines. Hyper-V replication is a feature of Hyper-V that provides the ability to make a copy of a virtual machine at a different geographic location for disaster recovery purposes. In 2013, we installed Hyper-V 2012 on an Arizona Geological Survey server to support regional nodes of the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS), including: Arizona Geological Survey, Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, Kentucky Geological Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, and the State Geological Survey hub. In September 2013, the NGDS virtual server at the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology (NBMG) failed catastrophically with a loss of 200 gigabytes of data. Fortunately, Hyper-V replication was engaged and the server mirrored, insuring that all NBMG data survived. We used the Hyper-V mirror to restore 100% of the data, thereby avoiding a catastrophic loss of data that would have taken 100s of hours to reconstitute. This document provides instructions regarding the use of the Hyper-V 2012 replication feature to replicate virtual servers running on Hyper-V 2012. This process makes it easy to back up entire servers and their contents. Hyper-V is a Windows Server Role that can be installed on Windows Server 2012 platforms.Documents in the AZGS Documents Repository collection are made available by the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact azgs-info@email.arizona.edu)