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I have an existing 3 server hyperv cluster using Dell R715 AMD machines.

Now I'm planning out what to do if our server room is damaged in a disaster. The plan is to have a single, fairly powerful, server waiting at another location to restore to. The locations are connected by a 50mbit connection.

If we have some warning, I'd like to migrate the virtual machines between locations. If not, we'll be restoring from off-site backups.

Here's the problem: None of Dell's new servers have AMD processors. Mixing AMD and Intel processors isn't ideal, but it's not in my budget to throw out the AMD servers - and since AMD servers seem to be being phased out, I don't want to be stuck buying older servers.

I know you can't do live migration between AMD and Intel processors. But can you do it while the virtual machine is powered off?

There are a few scenarios where I don't know if I will run into problems:

  • Restoring backups from a VM that was running on AMD processors to a host running Intel processors. I doubt this would pose a problem, but you never know.
  • Hyper-V replica - can it be done between AMD and Intel servers?
  • Live/quick migration of a powered off VM - will the Hyper-V tools allow me to migrate a powered off VM this way, or will it still check processor compatibility? Is my only option to export/import the VM?
HopelessN00b
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Grant
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1 Answers1

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You should not experience any problems moving between different processor types in a scenario where you stop and start the VM. (Such as an export and import.)

Offline Move

If these are cluster nodes and the cluster nodes had different types of processors in them, and you wanted to move (but still not live migrate) the VM from one node to the other, you'd need to boot the VM in "Processor Compatibility" mode.

Processor Compatibility Mode

But despite what it sounds like, "Processor Compatibility" mode still will not allow you to live migrate across machines with different processor types.

Ryan Ries
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