How moveable are hyper-v vm's? and other vm questions

[munkle]

So I have a windows 8 htpc that records all my tv and is pretty much always on because of multiple xboxs that use it as an extender. I also have a windows 2012 r2 essentials server that is pretty much always running that doesn't do anything besides back up my computers.

What I am thinking of doing is running the 2012 essentials server in a vm on the windows 8 htpc through hyper-v (this may seem backwards but due to hdcp and live recordings on the htpc it really isn't possible to make it a vm for my uses.)

What I am wondering is how movable is the server 2012 vm? Say my motherboard in my htpc died, can I just take the vm off the disk and start it up in hyper-v on my other windows 8 computer?

Also is it possible to have the vm use a ssd as its os disk and then pass-through some physical disks to the vm from the htpc to use to store data?

Also can a vm be set to start up at a certain time?

 

[MysticRyuujin]

Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 use the same Hyper-V code more or less (some features disabled in 8). The VMs are almost completely hardware independent. I say almost because you can't live migrate between say an Intel and an AMD processor, but you can do an offline migration).

I have VMs that I can move between Windows 8 and Server 2012 R2 without any issues. You cannot do any form of "live migration" between the Windows 8 and Server 2012 boxes but you can move them easy enough.

You can use any combination of SSD/HDD with or without pass-through that you want. That include the OS disk or data disk...

And you can of course create any scheduled task to shutdown or startup a VM through simple powershell commands.

 

[strikerP4]

Super easy to move Hyper-V VMs around to different systems. I would just use VHDx and not pass-through disks. It's a pain in the ass if you decide to move the VM. Gives you more flexibility on the storage if you put it in a VHDX if you decided to user a RAID or something on the backend in the future.