Hi,

I have a requirement to rename a Hyper-V Failover Cluster which is already being managed by SCVMM.

Has anyone done this before?
If I rename the cluster name in failover cluster manager will SCVMM just refresh and display the new name or is it likely to cause any issues?

Thanks in advance.

I have not tried it, but I guess that renaming cluster outside vmm will cause problems as it will not be able to contact the renamed cluster and retrieve new name info. A safer approach is removing cluster from vmm, renaming it and then reattaching renamed cluster to vmm.

Hi Erson72,

It is totally possible to change the name of the cluster from within Failover Cluster Manager, however SCVMM does not seem to pick the changes up automatically. This casues issues when running cluster validation aginst the old cluster name from within SCVMM because SCVMM thinks that the cluster is offline.

To get around this, I have dropped the old cluster out of SCVMM then renamed the cluster and reimported which is not the best solution I agree, but works.

I would imagine its possible with PowerShell to rename hostcluster from the old cluster name to the new. All resources, GUIDS and so forth would be otherwise correct. However this is not something I have done personally.

• Edited by Michael Coutanche Wednesday, January 07, 2015 1:09 PM
• Proposed as answer by Michael Coutanche Wednesday, January 07, 2015 1:23 PM

Thanks very much for your reply Gleb.

Thanks very much Michael for the advice. 

• Marked as answer by Erson72 Wednesday, January 07, 2015 1:15 PM

No problem, let us know how it goes.

I have done some testing and works great so thanks again for your help!

Hi,

I'm also looking at doing this, although I don't want to remove the cluster from SCVMM. I've got a number of Fabric configurations in SCVMM relating to the hosts cluster, especially the virtual switches to make up the converged fabric setup. I definitely would not want to redo this.

I noticed in the database a table named tbl_ADHC_HostCluster. Does anyone know if I update this table to reflect the new name, everything else will fall into place?

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

You can remove and re add the cluster to VMM, any network configuration related to Cluster will be retained.

I would not recommend changing those settings directly in the database.

Regards, Matej

Hmm ok well that makes things a little different then.

Not having done this before, what's the best method for renaming a Server 2012 R2 Failover Cluster? After reviewing the article https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757533(v=ws.10).aspx, it doesn't seem to tie up with the latest console. I can see at least two places I can change the name in the Failover Manager Console, but no "Rename" button.

Cheers,

Andrew

You can change the name of the Cluster under Cluster properties on the "General" tab. Keep in mind that the Cluster will need to be restarted and also all the nodes. After renaming, check if AD and DNS records were updated.