Upgrading Hyper-V from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

If you have an existing installation of Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 that you want to update to Windows Server 2008 R2 beta, this is possible, but you need to be aware of some of the limitations.

The first thing you need to be aware of is that we only support upgrading Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 if you have installed the Hyper-V RTM package on top of Windows Server 2008.  We do not support going straight from Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V beta to Windows Server 2008 R2 beta.

If you do have the RTM Hyper-V package installed we support

1. In-place upgrades from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 beta with Hyper-V enabled.
2. Exporting virtual machines from Windows Server 2008 and then importing them on Windows Server 2008 R2 beta.
3. Restoring virtual machines backed up under Windows Server 2008 (with VSS) on Windows Server 2008 R2.

You should be aware that we do not support bringing virtual machines with saved states from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2.  This means that you should shutdown all virtual machines before attempting the upgrade process.

If you do bring across virtual machines with saved states you can start the virtual machine by first deleting the saved state and then starting it - but this is not advised as there is a risk of data loss involved.  Similarly if a virtual machine has snapshots with saved state associated, you can apply them and delete the saved state before starting the virtual machine (also not advised - but possible).

In all cases you should update the integration services after migrating virtual machines to Windows Server 2008 R2 beta.

Note - we have not yet published the process for upgrading from Windows Server 2008 R2 beta to later Windows Server 2008 builds.

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2009
  Hi, Can I use SCVMM 2008 with Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V? Can I move an offline virtual machine from a WS2008 R2+Hyper-V beta to a WS2008 RTM+Hyper-V RTM? Best regards, Loïc Delambre

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2009
  Not at the moment.  The SCVMM team are working on an update to support Windows Server 2008 R2. Cheers, Ben

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2009
  Hi. I'm getting an erorr message while trying to upgrade Hyper-V Server 2008 Core to Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Core. "Hyper-V Server cannot be upgraded to Windows Longhorn SERVERHYPERCORE." Is this expected?

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2009
  Hi, When you say SCVMM 2008 will not work with HyperV R2, what functionilty are you referring to? I have a SCVMM server with 2 HyperV R2 hosts in a failover cluster. I manually created a VM on one of the HyperV hosts and enabled HA on the failover cluster and SCVMM sees it just fine. The issue I am running into is that when I try to deploy a template from SCVMM to the cluster, get the following error: Error (2912) An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the PNHYPERV55.provisionnetworks.net server. (Unknown error (0x80041001)) Recommended Action Ensure the agent is installed and running. Ensure the WS-Management service is installed and running, then restart the agent. I am pretty sure my WS-Management service is working properly on the HyperV hosts. Is this a known issue? Thanks, WEE

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2009
  bday - I do not know.  Please file a bug through the beta program. WEE - Sorry, you would have to ask one of the SCVMM guys about that (feel free to follow the links on my blog :-) Cheers, Ben