Migrating a Hyper-V VM from Server 2008 R2 to Server 2012

With our new development methodology running smoothly for the past few months, it was time to start cleaning up the server rack. There were a few old 2008 servers that were hosting some of our low priority servers as VMs in Hyper-V. With our new powerhouse server running flawlessly, I wanted to start consolidating the servers onto one.

I was surprised to find that you could not easily migrate a VM from 2008 to 2012. Since these were non-mission critical servers, it was quicker (and easier) for me to just shut them down, copy the VHDX files from the old host to the new one and then setup a new VM using these old hard drives.

The NICs had to be reinstalled but Windows did this automatically for me. I did have to go and reassign the static IP addresses, but that was all the hand holding I had to do.

All in all, this was a very painless process. And I was able to turn off one of our older physical servers. Time for the recycling facility. :)