Monitoring Hyper-V Replica in Windows 8

Hyper-V Replica is an awesome technology in Windows 8 that allows for virtual machines to be replicated from one Hyper-V host environment to another.  This includes replication to and from clusters and/or standalone hosts.  The technology also provides a mechanism for roll-back to previous states and configuration of failover properties, such as IP addresses.  In this post, we’ll discuss how we can monitor the replicas  to validate replication is occurring as we expect.

The replication properties can be found through a variety of means.  These include the console:

From the console you’ll get information on:

• Replication cycles
• Replication cycles missed
• Replication errors
• Average replication latency
• Average replication size

You can also export to CSV so you can view the data in a report.  I’m thinking a cool example would be to plug the report automatically into a SharePoint scorecard using PerformancePoint.  I’ll have to try that…

From PowerShell:

PS C:Windowssystem32> Get-VMReplication | fl

ReplicaServerPort              : 80

CertificateThumbprint          :

AuthenticationType             : Integrated

AutoResynchronizeEnabled       : False

AutoResynchronizeIntervalStart : 18:30:00

AutoResynchronizeIntervalEnd   : 06:00:00

ResynchronizeStartTime         :

TestReplicationStartTime       :

CompressionEnabled             : True

VSSSnapshotReplicationEnabled  : False

VSSSnapshotFrequency           : 0

RecoveryHistory                : 2

InitialReplicationStartTime    :

ExcludedDisks                  : {}

ComputerName                   : CNCYVSVR20

PrimaryServerName              : cncyvsvr20.concurrency.com

CurrentReplicaServerName       : cncyvsvr21.concurrency.com

ReplicaServerName              : cncyvsvr21.concurrency.com

ReplicationState               : Replicating

ReplicationHealth              : Normal

ReplicationMode                : Primary

LastReplicationTime            : 1/31/2012 10:53:55 AM

ReplicatedDisks                : {Hard Drive on IDE controller number 0 at location 0}

SecurityTag                    :

TestVirtualMachine             :

VMId                           : 9c90cfe3-bd97-4fb2-9286-cc34895ef75a

VMName                         : CNCYRDCB03

IsDeleted                      : False

You can also view replication health via perfmon, which would also bubble up into System Center tools like Operations Manager.  You can also use these in baselining and estimating WAN saturation.

I hope this helps everyone see where Hyper-V replica will provide a cost effective and manageable replication solution that also provides visibility into the replication channel and its impact on the Hyper-V host or cluster.

Nathan Lasnoski