Hello,

     I'm new to setting up Hyper-V replication and would like to first start by describing my environment.

Location A (Primary Site)

Two node Server 2012 Hyper-V host cluster. Fiber Attached storage. I have a CSV assigned to the cluster dedicated for replication. Network address = 172.24.110.xxx. All servers are assigned static IP addresses.

Location B (Secondary Site)

Two node Server 2012 Hyper-V host cluster. Fiber Attached storage. I have a CSV assigned to the cluster dedicated for replication. Network address = 172.24.60.xxx. All servers are assigned static IP addresses.

I have the Hyper-V Replica Broker setup on each cluster in both locations, both sites can replicate to each other and I pointed the default location to store the replica files to the C:\Clusterstorage\Hypervreplication volume that I created strictly for replicated VM's.  I've successfully tested replication from Location A to Location B. When I look at the volume that contains the newly replicate files, I have a folder called "Hyper-V Replica". Within this folder I have four other folders. They are as follows: Planned Virtual Machines, Snapshots, Virtual Hard Disks and Virtual Machines. One of my issues is that everything seems to be based off of the VM's GUID. It seems difficult to keep track of the name of each VM that would get replicated to this volume. Is there a way to easily identify which VM's files are in a particular folder? I ask because when you create a new VM on a volume, the folder is named whatever the VM is named which makes it easy when you have 300 or so VM's to deal with.

My other question has to do with the IP addresses. Location A and Location B are both on the same domain but each location uses a different network address. I join the VM to the domain at Location A (Primary Site) using a 110 network address and then plan on replicating it to Location B (Secondary Site) that uses a 60 Network address. Once I enable replication on a VM, I then can add the failover TCP/IP address for the .60 network. Once the VM has completely replicated, I'll turn the VM off and do a planned failover. I turn on the replicated VM at Location B but I'm unable to ping the VM by name or remote desktop to the VM. I'm sure this is because DNS does not have the IP address resolving to the name. Do I manually have to enter in the DNS records for the 60 network? Is there an easier more efficient way of bring the replicated VM online when using static addressing? If anyone see's anything I'm doing wrong please let me know or let me know if there is a better way of doing what I'm trying to accomplish. Hopefully I explained things clear enough. lol Thanks

Hi Pat,

once you have the replication set up for your VMs, right-click one VM in the Failover Cluster Manager and select Move=>Virtual Machine Storage.
You can now select a path where you'd like the VM. We always do that in order to have each VM in it's own folder. 

The IP-Addresses are being injected to the VM in the process of the failover, however DNS registration usually takes a little time.
If it's urgent, usually we login via the console and run a ipconfig /registerdns.
You may also be able to do that via a script.

In case it is not so urgent, just wait some minutes.

Best Regards,
Jens

Thank you for your reply! I did the ipconfig /registerdns and after a few minutes I was then able to ping the server name. I also created a folder on the CSV that was called the same thing as the replicated VM. I moved the virtual machine files to this new location. I'm having an issue resuming replication. I'll try to explain what I did.

Originally the VM was located in Location A. I did a planned failover to location B. I then created a folder on the CSV named the same as my VM. I opened up failover cluster manager and moved the files associated with the VM to this new folder. Once the files were moved I shutdown the VM in Location A and turned on the VM in Location B. Once online, I create a folder called "TESTFOLDER1" on the C:\ drive. I wanted to test that these new changes would get replicate back to Location A. I had to click "Resume Replication" but I'm receiving an error. The errors states:

Hyper-V failed to open the file 'C:\ClusterStorage\HYPERVREPLICATION\HYPER-V REPLICA\VIRTUAL HARD DISKS\93CD2D9C-D079-43F2-A5C5-A15BF33A9E84\ReplicaTest1_32A67CF5-DE95-4C60-8B56-F3E0C54462D4.hrl' for replication in primary server for virtual machine 'ReplicaTest1': The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002). (Virtual Machine ID 93CD2D9C-D079-43F2-A5C5-A15BF33A9E84) 

The location the error is pointing to is the old location.

The new location is as follows:

C:\ClusterStorage\HYPERVREPLICATION\REPLICATEST1

The 2nd error is

Hyper-V suspended replication for virtual machine 'ReplicaTest1' due to a non-recoverable failure. (Virtual Machine ID 93CD2D9C-D079-43F2-A5C5-A15BF33A9E84). Resume replication after correcting the failure.

The last error is

Hyper-V could not replicate changes for virtual machine 'ReplicaTest1': The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002). (Virtual Machine ID 93CD2D9C-D079-43F2-A5C5-A15BF33A9E84)

When I look in the new location where the files were supposed to be moved to I can not find the .VHD file. The VHD file is still in the old location of C:\ClusterStorage\HYPERVREPLICATION\Hyper-V Replica\Virtual hard disks\93CD2D9C-D079-43F2-A5C5-A15BF33A9E84.

Basically I'm trying to figure out why I can't replicate back to Location A from Location B and why my file structure looks different. Thanks

Just an update. The volume was not large enough for the .VHDX file to copy over to the new location. I expanded the volume and moved the .vhdx to the new location and I still receive errors when trying to resume replication. I think I found out what the problem is but I don't know how to fix it. According to the error. "Hyper-V failed to open the file 'C:\ClusterStorage\HYPERVREPLICATION\REPLICATEST1\ReplicaTest1_32A67CF5-DE95-4C60-8B56-F3E0C54462D4.hrl' for replication in primary server for virtual machine 'ReplicaTest1': The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002). (Virtual Machine ID 93CD2D9C-D079-43F2-A5C5-A15BF33A9E84)" Hyper-V is looking for a file called ReplicaTest1_32A67CF5-DE95-4C60-8B56-F3E0C54462D4.hrl but the actual file in the 'C:\ClusterStorage\HYPERVREPLICATION\REPLICATEST1\' folder is called "ReplicaTest1_D9773FD4-5D6C-4923-BDDF-0E0B3EE534ED". Why would the name have changed?

Hi Pat,

As far as I know, since there is replication relationship on the VM, it is not recommended to move to the other folder. It would cause unexpected errors.

To identify the VM easily, we could change the name of VHD(before configure repliacation).

Open Settings of the VM, and change the name of VHD.

Best Regards,

Leo