Hyper-V Live Migration Error – VM is not compatible with physical computer . . .

We just did a quick cluster setup on the Intel Modular Server that has been loaned to us by Intel.

We have 2 nodes with Intel Xeon Processor 5400 Series CPUs and 2 nodes with Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series CPUs. The base chipset in each node pair is the 5000 series and 5520 respectively.

So, in order to set up our High Availability cluster, we discovered that need to make sure we keep the different architectures in mind when we configure our virtual machines.

Once the HA VM has been created make sure to check the Migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version setting in the VM’s Settings properties as shown above.

Otherwise the following will happen when a live migration is attempted:

There was an error checking for virtual machine compatibility on the target node.

The virtual machine “TD-Win7Mgmt” is not compatible with the target node “TD-HV_Node-01.testdomain.local”.

. . .

So, when it comes to configuring an Intel Modular Server based Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 cluster we need to keep in mind that there is currently a technology shift happening at the CPU level and at the compute module level.

Where possible, it is preferable to have the same hardware across all compute modules in the Intel Modular Server.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer