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I'm trying to enable Windows Hyper-V replication over WAN.

I have (finally!) been able to achieve this in a test environment over LAN using the certificate-based authentication method (rather than Kerberos) and have been able to successfully get two servers to replicate using the hostname.

My confusion now is that I do not know how to get them to communicate over the WAN for the purpose of replication.

In production, I currently have one server (Win 2012 R2) sat in a datacentre and the intention is to spin up another server to take the replication, but this will be in another datacentre, connected only via the internet using external IP addresses. There is no active directory in place, they are just in a workgroup. I'd rather not set up AD or DC just for this (unless I really have to). I already have an A record pointing towards the server (via our domain names provider), so it has an entry in the form of server1.domain.com. So I have server1.domain.com pointing to external IP address, which reaches the server correctly.

In a test environment, this is what I have done so far.

Both servers are Windows 2012 R2.

Server 1 is the main host server with a number of VM's, it's named SERVER1 (Computer Name) Server 2 has been spun up to take the replication of the VM's from server 1, it's named SERVER2.

They are currently connected internally only via internal network and internal IP addresses. As mentioned above, I have successfully achieved replication between SERVER1 and SERVER2 using certificate-based authentication and it works correctly, but this is using the computer name SERVER2 as a destination replication server. Obviously once this is in a production environment, this method will not be possible.

My question is, how do I set this up so that SERVER1 can see SERVER2 across a WAN (for the purpose of Hyper-V replica) where there is no active directory. How will they resolve?

Do I make an entry on the HOSTS file? If so, what should I enter? Is it as easy as

SERVER1 External IP address of SERVER1 SERVER2 External IP address of SERVER2

Or do I point it to the FQDN (which is created as an A record) in the format:

SERVER1 SERVER1.domain.com SERVER2 SERVER2.domain.com

I'd appreciate any assistance on this as I'm currently a bit stuck and as I'm currently unable to test this is a live production environment I'd rather go in with as much knowledge as possible.

Thank you.

omega1
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2 Answers2

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I am afraid this not an answer to what you currently have.

What you should be running for your configuration, (ie no AD, no shared storage)is a shared nothing configuration supported on Windows Server 2016.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/e14e7171-d8fb-418c-9e9e-b3883f4c4ea3/windows-2016-2node-shared-nothing-stretched-cluster-with-storage-replicas?forum=winserverClustering

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/part-2-storage-replica-with-microsoft-failover-cluster-and-scale-out-file-server-role-windows-server-technical-preview

Anthony Fornito
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  • Fomito Thank you, appreciate your comment on this. I was eventually able to resolve it for Server 2012 R2 which is what I was using. Thank you. – omega1 Apr 02 '18 at 17:47
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So after a bit of playing around I was able to resolve this by entering the hostname of the Replica server in the Host server and making an entry in the HOSTS file that points the hostname to the IP address. It wasn't that difficult in the end.

omega1
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