Creating a VM in SCVMM 2012 R2 on a cluster

oops

Creating a virtual machine in SCVMM for the first time is easy and so is creating a virtual machine that will be on a cluster, but one little check box can cause it to fail and could have you scratching your head.

This post shows the process step by step and the check box you might miss if adding a VM to a failover VM cluster which causes the process to fail. Not the kind of mistake you will make twice.

Step by Step process

1. From the VMM console, click on Create virtual machine.

image

2. Select your Virtual Hard Disk from you library.

image

3. Give your new virtual machine a name.

image

4. From cloud capability select Hyper-V.

image

5. Customise the hardware as needed.

6. Critical step for a clustered VM: scroll down to availability and check “make this virtual machine highly available”.

image

7. Select the Host Group for where to place your Virtual Machine.

image

8. Select the node where the virtual machine will run.

image

9. Select the path for where your VM will be placed.

image

10. Correct the VHD file name to match your VHD naming convention.

image

11. Select the Virtual Switch to use

image

12. Configure the virtual machine properties

image

13. View the final settings and create the VM.

image

If you have done everything correctly the VM will created. If it failed with the error below, go back and repeat the process and check step 6.

Error message when you don’t check the box for high availability

If this VM is stored on a CSV (Cluster Shared Volume) and you haven’t checked the HA box the job will generate the following error:

image

Error (23001)
Cannot create or update a non highly available virtual machine because the path “path to CSV storage” is a clustered resource.

Recommended Action
Ensure that the path exists and that the path is not a cluster disk or cluster shared volume, and then try the operation again.

References

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/systemcenter/en-US/49f03e37-3b54-4c81-a5f8-55fb357d89cf/cannot-create-vms-in-csv-using-scvmm-2012?forum=virtualmachinemgrclustering