Home > Storage > PowerStore > Virtualization and Cloud > Dell PowerStore: Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices > PowerStore snapshots and Hyper-V VM migration tools
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and later versions offer native tools for migrating VMs. These methods might be preferred in most day-to-day situations. For example, when a guest VM is live-migrated from one node to another within the same Hyper-V cluster configuration, no data must be copied or moved. All nodes in that cluster have shared access to the underlying CSV.
However, there are many valid cases for using SAN-based snapshots to move VMs. When an administrator must migrate a guest VM from one host or cluster to another host or cluster, the data (VHDs) must be copied to the target host or cluster. This copy consumes network bandwidth and might require significant time if the VHDs are large. The copy can also consume additional SAN space unnecessarily because another copy of the data is created.
When moving VMs to another host or cluster, it might be quicker to unmap the host volumes containing the VM configuration files and VHDs. Then, map the volumes to the new target host or cluster. You can also perform this process using thin clones if preserving the state of the original environment temporarily is needed.
This procedure might involve a small amount of downtime for the VM being moved during a maintenance window. However, this approach might be more practical than waiting for a large amount of data to copy over the network. This copy would consume additional SAN space unnecessarily.