Making a new virtual machine highly available - Hyper-V Tutorial

- [Instructor] So now we've got our cluster online, let's create a highly available Virtual Machine. Instead of creating a Virtual Machine within the Hyper-V Manager as I did earlier in this course, we're going to create the Virtual Machine directly in the Failover Cluster Manager. So to do that, I'm going to expand the cluster, which it's already expanded, and I'm going to click on the Rolls container. From there, I'm going to click on Virtual Machines, and then I'm going to click on New Virtual Machine. Now, I'm prompted to select the cluster node where I want to create the Virtual Machine. So, I'm just going to place this Virtual Machine on Hyper V-1. I could really choose any of these nodes, it doesn't matter. I'll click Okay. And now Windows launches the New Virtual Machine Wizard. This wizard is very similar to what you saw inside of the Hyper-V Manager. I'm going to click Next, and the first thing that I have to do is to provide a name for the Virtual Machine that I'm creating. We could call this anything, I'm just going to call it HA, for High Availability. Then, we have to specify where we want the Virtual Machine to be stored. As you'll recall, when I showed you how to create a Virtual Machine earlier, I selected this checkbox, and then I directed the Virtual Machine to be created in C:/VMs. Because we're creating a highly available Virtual Machine, we have to do things just a little bit different. Rather than storing the Virtual Machine in C:/VMs, we need to store the Virtual Machine on cluster storage. So the way that I do that is by clicking browse, and then I'll go to this PC, and then I'll go to C:, and then I'll double click on Cluster Storage, and then Volume 1 and click Select Folder. Now, even though this path points to the C drive, this is a logical folder. So, although the location looks like something on the C drive, we're actually storing the Virtual Machine on our cluster storage. So, I'll go ahead and click Next. Now we specify the Virtual Machine Generation. I'll go with a Generation 2 Virtual Machine and click Next. Now we assign memory to the Virtual Machine. I'm just going to go with the default and click Next. Next, we have to determine how the Virtual Machine will connect to the network. So I'm going to click the down arrow, and I'm going to choose My Virtual Switch. And remember, we have to have an identical virtual switch name on each of our cluster nodes. I'll click Next. Now we have to choose what we want to happen with regard to the virtual hard disk. I'm going to opt to Create a New Virtual Hard Disk for this new Virtual Machine. I'll accept the defaults and click next. And then we have to decide how we want to install the Virtual Machine. So, I'm going to install an operating system from a bootable CD or DVD rom. And then I have to specify where the IMG file is located at. So, I'll click Browse and I'll go to my ISL folder and select the Windows Server 2025 image. I'll click Okay, and I'll click Next. And now we see a summary of the configuration options. Everything looks good, I'll click Finish. And our new highly available Virtual Machine has been created. Now, one thing that you'll notice about this is that we got a warning message. And the reason why we got this warning is because the installation DVD, the ISO file, is located in a local path. So in other words, if this Virtual Machine were to fail over to another host, well, then that path doesn't exist. So that's why we got the warning message. So, the way that we would fix this is to install the operating system and then release the DVD drive. So, I'll show you what that looks like. Let me go ahead and click Finish. And what I'm going to do now is click on the preview window, and this is going to open up the console. I'll click Start and that's going to start the Virtual Machine. And we'll go ahead and install an operating system. And I'm just going to breeze through the installation process by accepting all the defaults. And, so, I'll just enter a password for this new Virtual Machine, (keyboard keys clicking) and the Virtual Machine is ready to use. So, I'm going to go ahead and close this out. And then with the Virtual Machine selected, I'm going to click on Settings. And this is going to open up the Virtual Machine settings, and this is almost identical to what we would see through the Hyper-V Manager. So, I'm going to select the DVD drive, and then I'm going to select None and click Okay. And, so, now we don't have to worry about the Virtual Machine not being able to find the ISO file location if it were to fail over to another host. So, that's how you create a highly available Virtual Machine using the Failover Cluster Manager.