Using Hyper-V Resource Pools to ease migration between different configurations

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Today I was asked about the following configuration:

A user has a stretched Hyper-V cluster running between two datacenters.  This stretched cluster is sitting on top of replicated storage.  However, the storage appears in a different location on either side of the cluster.  How can this be made to work?

So the configuration is like this:

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The problem is that when a virtual machine moves from one side of the cluster to the other – it needs to have its storage path changed automatically.

Fortunately, Hyper-V has all the infrastructure you need for this.  The key piece of technology to use here is Hyper-V storage resource pools.  Hyper-V storage resource pools allow you to remove path details from the virtual machine configurations.

For this configuration what I want to do is to:

  1. Create a storage resource pool – with the same name – on each node in the cluster.
  2. Configure the storage resource pool to point to the right storage path for each node.
  3. Configure my virtual machines to utilize this storage resource pool.

Creating the storage resource pool is done using PowerShell.

On the first two nodes I want to run this command:

New-VMResourcePool -Name "VHDs" -ResourcePoolType VHD -Paths "E:\"

Then on the second two nodes I want to run this command:

New-VMResourcePool -Name "VHDs" -ResourcePoolType VHD -Paths "F:\"

Once I have configured these storage resource pools – the Hyper-V UI will magically detect them.  Now when I go to configure the virtual hard drives I see a resource pool option:

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Once I have selected the appropriate resource pool – I can now move this virtual machine (with import / export, quick migration or live migration) and the virtual hard disk path will be automatically updated to the correct path for the Hyper-V host it is running on.

Cheers,
Ben