How to configure Hyper-V failover cluster to live migrate when dynamic memory runs out?

Posted by Matt Johnson on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Matt Johnson
Published on 2011-09-15T18:02:33Z Indexed on 2011/11/12 1:56 UTC
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Appologies in advance that this is not a direct programming question, but I have a feeling that the solution involves custom powershell scripts (maybe), so this is as good a place to ask as any.

I maintain a website that has a large Hyper-V cluster for SQL Servers. We are using Windows 2008 R2 SP1, and the new "dynamic memory" feature.

I've already ready reviewed the Best Practices Guide, and implemented it's suggested configuration.

Everything works well, except that when SQL demand increases memory pressure to expand to more memory than is available on the physical machine, the memory status goes into the "Warning" state and stays there. I assume the hypervisor is using a swapfile on the host to fulfill the memory requirement, thus slowing the virtual machine down.

When this happens, there are plenty of other nodes in the cluster that have available resources. I can live-migrate the virtual server over there and everything works, and the warnings go away.

Now how can I automate this? I see no menu options in either Hyper-V or the Failover Cluster Manager for performing a migration or shutdown when dynamic memory goes into the warning state. Any ideas about how to script this, or monitor it and invoke the action directly, would be helpful.

If the solution involves coding, powershell would be ideal, but I could envison this as a .Net Service that monitors for this state and kicks off the migration request. I just don't know what objects are involved in doing the monitoring or kicking off the live migration.

Thanks in advance.

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