You are here: Host-level Hyper-V protection > Host-level Hyper-V requirements

Host-level Hyper-V requirements

In addition to the Core Double-Take requirements, use these requirements for host-level Hyper-V protection.

Source and target host operating system—Your source and target host servers can be any Windows 2008 or 2008 R2 operating system from the Core Double-Take requirements that has the Hyper-V role enabled. In addition, you can use Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 or Server Core 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role enabled. (Hyper-V Server 2008 and Server Core 2008 are not supported.) In each case, the source and target must be running identical operating system versions. For example, your source cannot be Windows 2008 and your target Windows 2008 R2.
Guest operating systems—The guest operating system can be any operating system. However, if you want Double-Take to monitor the virtual machine for failover, then you must have Integration Components installed on the guest operating system and the virtual machine must be powered on.
Virtual machine configurations—The following limitations apply to the virtual machines on the source and target Hyper-V servers.

The virtual machines must be in their own home folder that is not shared by any other virtual machines.
The virtual machines cannot be created in or replicated to the Hyper-V system default folder.
The virtual machines' snapshot folder must be unique to each virtual machine, they cannot be in the Hyper-V system default folder, and they cannot be changed once protection has been established.
The virtual machines cannot use raw, pass-through, or differencing disks.

WAN support—If your source and target are across a WAN and you want Double-Take to automatically update networking on the guest operating system during failover, the following limitations apply. If you choose not to have Double-Take automatically update networking on the guest operating system during failover, you will have to update the network manually, but the following limitations will not apply.
- Guest operating system—The guest operating system must be Windows 2003 or Windows 2008.
- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)—The host and guest operating systems must have the WMI service enabled.
- User Access Control (UAC)—UAC must be disabled on the guest operating system.
- Name resolution—You must establish name resolution for the guest operating system.
Microsoft .NET Framework—Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 Service Pack 1 is required on the source and target. This version is not included in the .NET version 4.0 release. Therefore, even if you have .NET version 4.0 installed, you will also need version 3.5.1. You can install this version from the Double-Take CD, via a web connection during the Double-Take installation, or from a copy you have obtained manually from the Microsoft web site.

If you are installing on Server Core 2008 R2, .NET 3.5.1 functionality is included with the operating system but is disabled by default. You will need to enable it prior to installing Double-Take. See your Server Core documentation for the specific commands to enable the .NET functionality.

Supported configurations—The following table identifies the supported configurations for a host-level Hyper-V job.

Configuration		Supported	Not Supported
Source to target configuration¹	One to one, active/standby	X
	One to one, active/active	X
	Many to one	X
	One to many	X
	Chained		X
	Single server	X
Server configuration²	Standalone to standalone	X
	Standalone to cluster	X
	Cluster to standalone	X
	Cluster to cluster	X
	Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) guest level	X
	Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) host level		X³
Upgrade configuration⁴	Upgrade 5.2 Hyper-V server to Hyper-V server connection to 6.0 host-level Hyper-V job	X
Upgrade configuration⁴	Upgrade 5.3 Hyper-V to Hyper-V job to 6.0 host-level Hyper-V job	X

See Supported configurations for details on each of the source to target configurations.
Windows 2008 R2 is the only supported version of clustered Hyper-V servers. Windows 2008 R1 is not supported for clustering.
Although CSV is not supported for host-level protection, you can use host-level protection for non-CSV virtual machines on a CSV configured cluster. To do this, you will need to execute the altitude script located in the \tools\scripts\csv directory on the product CD or in the extracted web download files. If you copy the altitude.bat file to another location, be sure and copy the two .reg files as well. To protect non-CSV virtual machines on a CSV configured cluster, run the following command on each node of the cluster.

altitude default

The default script will cause your cluster to go into redirected (maintenance) mode the next time the CSV is brought online, taken offline, or changes owning nodes.

If you change back to CSV virtual machines on your CSV configured cluster, you will need to run the following command to change Double-Take back to the correct configuration for CSV functionality.

altitude target

The target script will keep your cluster from going into redirected (maintenance) mode.
When upgrading from version 5.2, you can keep your existing job, but you will need to upgrade to version 5.3 first, then upgrade to version 6.0. If you want to upgrade directly to version 6.0, you will have to delete your job and re-create it. When upgrading from version 5.3, you can perform a rolling upgrade where you update the target server first. After the upgrade is complete, the source will automatically reconnect to the target. At this point, the job will be an unmanaged job that you can delete or failover. No other job controls will be available. Once you upgrade you source, the job will be fully controllable. If you are using a cluster configuration, you cannot upgrade. You must delete the existing job, upgrade all of your nodes, and then re-create the job.