First published on TECHNET on Apr 14, 2014
One of the key design principles that we focused on when developing the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM) disaster recovery service was a Service-Oriented Extensible Architecture. Combining this service-oriented approach with a close attention on telemetry data after each release gives us the opportunity to enable new scenarios for continuous service improvement, and quickly identify gaps in existing functionality that our customers would like us to address.
HRM has been Generally Available since January 2014, and one of the most common error scenarios that many of our customers have faced has been around the strict requirement for selecting
Hyper-V Capability Profile
when creating a Private Cloud in System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). Leaving this setting unselected, when planning the VMM infrastructure, would normally result in an error when configuring cloud protection in the HRM portal. This requirement also limited our interoperability with Windows Azure Pack (WAP) since VM role deployment fails in WAP if the cloud associated with a WAP plan has the Hyper-V Capability Profile selected.
In our March Service update, we have addressed this by removing the requirement of enabling the Hyper-V Capability Profile on the VMM Cloud. Customers would no longer be required to configure this setting in VMM, and for those who already have, we will ensure backward compatibility when configuring clouds and enabling virtual machine protection. Clouds that are associated with a plan in WAP can also now be configured for disaster recovery and protection in HRM without making any changes to their capability profile settings in VMM. Virtual Machines deployed on Virtual Machine Clouds associated with a WAP plan, can be enabled for protection and can be added to Recovery Plans in HRM for one-click failover automation. Our singular goal with HRM is to simplify the setup and operation of your disaster recovery infrastructure, and this update is one of the many ways in which we are working towards achieving that goal.
To start using this and other new enhancements to the service, you will need a new version of the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Provider that you can download from the HRM Portal. If you haven’t already, you can also opt-in to receive automatic Provider Updates via Microsoft Updates for quicker access to new functionality and added features. Customers will need to install Update Rollup 1 on their primary and secondary VMM Servers to leverage this enhancement. Existing functionality, based on enabling the Capability Profile setting will continue to work for customers who choose to not update their Provider. More information about Update Rollup 1 is available in the following Knowledge Base Article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2936967
You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series,
Transform the datacenter
. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager in your deployment follow our detailed
step-by-step guide
. You can also visit the HRM forum on
MSDN
for additional information and to engage with other customers.
