Hyper-V VM Auto-Discovery

When you create a Hyper-V scenario, the Engine collects information about all virtual machines on the Hyper-V server and stores this data in a scenario configuration file. This is an .XML file. The following information is collected:

Note: After a Continuous Availability scenario is created, if a new Master VM checkpoint is created outside Continuous Availability, the user needs to stop the scenario, and run auto-discovery again, and then re-run the scenario to include the new VM checkpoint files.

Virtual Machine Settings

These settings are stored in an XML file named <VM GUID>.XML, where VM GUID is the unique global identifier for the virtual machine. This file resides in the %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Virtual Machines folder.

Virtual Machine Folder

There is a folder for each virtual machine and the name of the folder is <VM GUID>. This folder contains VSV and BIN files when a virtual machine is running.

Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs)

VHDs are hard disks associated with each VM. These files could be in different locations and have a .VHD extension.

Snapshots

All snapshots for a virtual machine are placed in the snapshot folder. All files inside a snapshot are considered for replication. Any VHD files in the snapshot have the extension, .AVHD. Multiple snapshots for a VM have multiple AVHD files. All files are discovered and replicated.

ACLs

In addition to files and folders, security data such as ACLs and owner information for each folder and file are replicated. This security information is needed to register and run the virtual machine on the Replica server.

Virtual Network Configuration

If a VM is connected to a virtual network, the network data setting is included in the XML configuration file.