Removing and reinstalling System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Question

I initially setup hyper-v on a single server with a FC SAN. I configured it as a failover cluster with just the one server in it, using cluster shared volumes for the VMs, knowing I'd expand later.

I'm now getting ready to add my second host to the cluster.

However, I installed VMM 2012 directly on the first host computer, using an SQL express instance also on the host computer. This is obviously not good from a high availability standpoint. So a few questions about how to proceed are:

Can I safely remove VMM 2012 from the first host without losing any virtual machines or data? Anything specific I should do to make reinstalling VMM go smoothly? (besides the obvious "have backups, know how to restore them"). Will it cause any VMs to get deleted, restarted, etc?
Where should I install VMM? The technet docs say ideally have a seperate SQL cluster to store the database on. I don't have the hardware or licenses for that. Just my two virtual machine hosts and the SAN. I'm thinking a virtual machine inside the cluster, with the caveat that if the VMM virtual machine has issues, I'll have to use the failover cluster and hyper-v manager tools to fix it before I can do anything through VMM. Any other issues I should be aware of?
When I do reinstall VMM, what needs to be done to make it see all the old configuration?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 03 '13 at 20:43

2

Yes
Most people install SCVMM in a VM running in the same cluster that it's managing. This is generally the same thing people do with vCenter Server in VMware environments.
What configuration? You'll add the Hyper-V cluster to SCVMM and it will pick up the host and cluster configuration from the clustered Hyper-V servers.

answered Apr 03 '13 at 20:43

joeqwerty

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By old configuration I meant what was in the sql database before removing. Or do I just delete that and start over with a new database? – Grant Apr 03 '13 at 21:06
What would be in the database that you would want to keep? – joeqwerty Apr 03 '13 at 21:07
Not sure what settings vmm keeps in there. So I don't know. – Grant Apr 03 '13 at 21:14

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '13 at 15:32

After successfully reinstalling VMM on a virtual machine, I found the following:

Removing VMM from the host, along with it's database causes no problems. You obviously won't be able to use VMM until you get it reinstalled - use Failover Cluster Manager and Hyper-V manager instead
If you have a library of templates, create your virtual machine for the new VMM install before removing it - you won't have your templates until you get it reinstalled.
Remove any ISOs from the virtual machines if you are using ISO Contstrained Delegation (which you will need to setup again for the new VMM server)
After reinstalling VMM on the virtual machine, you can add the cluster and all your virtual machines will show up again.
Networks, libraries, VM templates, etc will need to get setup again.
Be sure to exclude VMM virtual machine from optimization actions
Reconfiguring the node's virtual network that VMM uses to talk to the nodes will cause issues - since it will disconnect VMM in the middle. It leaves your virtual network broken, and you'll have to fix it from Hyper-V manager.

Removing and reinstalling System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

2 Answers2