With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V we now have the ability to Live Migrate (yes, Live Migration, the zero downtime migration) virtual machines between different hosts without needing a cluster or shared storage thus saving a vast expense that most small business cannot afford. This is super easy to configure, so here goes. First of all we need to ensure our two hosts are joined to the same Active Directory domain (this is not necessary however it will make things a lot smoother).Next we need to tweak the delegation settings on the computer accounts for the Hyper-V host.

So on each host we need to allow delegation of both ‘cifs’ and ‘Microsoft Virtual System Migration Service’ to the opposite server. Once done we can turn our attention to the Hyper-V console on each host, from the Action pane select Hyper-V Settings.

Once the settings window has loaded click Live Migrations

Click the checkbox to enable incoming and outgoing live migrations, choose use Kerberos (we did the delegation for this earlier) and select a network to use for live migration traffic (as a best practice this should be a dedicated network).That’s it, all the configuration is done, we just need to test a migration………So on a host select a Virtual Machine, right click and select Move.

This will start the Move Wizard. So we will select ‘Move the Virtual Machine’.

Browse and select our other host.

Choose to move all the VM data to a single location (we need to as there is no shared storage).

Choose the destination folder that the machine will go in to on our remote system.

Check the summary for mistakes.

Were done, the machine will move without any interruption to its service. More information on this can be found on TechNet here.