Windows 2012 cluster

[smalls001]

Hi all,

 

I am wondering if you could give me some advice on which way to go...

 

Option 1

 

Would be to create a 2 or 3 node hyper v cluster and connect these to a SAN to run our network

 

 

Option 2

 

Would be create a 2 node file server connected to a SAN, then using Smb to a hyper v 2node cluster. Not sure if this would be necessary.

 

I was thinking along the lines of option 1, less resources necessary. What is your thought ?

 

 

Thanks in advance..

[FN-GM]

option 1, its more simple.

[dhicks]

Would be to create a 2 or 3 node hyper v cluster and connect these to a SAN to run our network

 

If I understand correctly, doesn't Hyper-V let you use a DFS share as a VM image repository, so you can have your VM images duplicated between two servers for fail-over purposes and skip having to buy a SAN?

[localzuk]

If I understand correctly, doesn't Hyper-V let you use a DFS share as a VM image repository, so you can have your VM images duplicated between two servers for fail-over purposes and skip having to buy a SAN?

 

No. Sadly not. Dfs doesn't work with hyper-v. It doesn't interact with VSS so the hyper-v disk images don't get updated.

[jbailey]

I think your thinking of scofs in relation to option 2.

 

http://www.petri.co.il/windows-server-2012-smb-3-scale-out-file-server.htm

 

I looked at this when 2012 was released but just don't see what the advantages are. Seems to just be over complicating things and ultimately relying on less reliable storage than a San would provide.

[localzuk]

The main advantage? Price. A couple of JBOD trays and a couple of run of the mill servers connected to your normal switch come in significantly cheaper than a full SAN. Plus, you're using kit that is basically commodity hardware so is easier to replace if it fails. There's no hardware RAID so you're not tired to specific controllers, you can just slap the disks into another JBOD tray and another Win 2k12 server can load the storage spaces.

[Arthur]

I looked at this when 2012 was released but just don't see what the advantages are.

As localzuk mentioned above, the main advantage is price. The example configurations given in the articles below don't seem particularly complicated.

 

Getting started with DataOn JBOD in WS2012 R2 Scale-Out File Server « Aidan Finn

 

What I have built is the equivalent (more actually) of a 2-node Hyper-V cluster with a SAS attached SAN … albeit with tiered storage … and that storage was less than half the cost of a SAN from Dell/HP. In fact, the retail price of the HDDs is around 1/3 the list price of the HP equivalent. There is no comparison.

 

I deployed a bunch of VMs with differential disks last night. Nice and quick. Then I pinned the parent VHD to the SSD tier and created a boot storm. Once again, nice and quick. Nothing scientific has been done and I haven't done comparison tests yet.

 

But it was all simple to set up and way cheaper than traditional SAN. You can't beat that!

 

A kit/parts list for a WS2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster with DataOn SMB 3.0 storage « Aidan Finn

 

One of the benefits of SMB 3.0 storage is that a shared folder is more flexible than a CSV on a SAN LUN. There are more sharing options, and this means that Live Migration can span the traditional boundary of storage without involving Shared-Nothing Live Migration.

 

[...]

 

I recently priced up a kit, similar to above. It came in much cheaper than the equivalent blade/SAN configuration, which was a nice surprise. Even better was that the SOFS had 3 times more storage included than the SAN in that pricing!

[jbailey]

Thanks,

 

Re price - yes, didn't really think about it tbh.

 

That's an interesting article, I had not seen it set out like that where there is not a further level of hyper v nodes above the sofs nodes and with hyperv enabled on the sofs themselves.

 

Would be interested I looking at building something like that to try this out, sofs/storage spaces does look fun, but didn't see much in the way of low cost boxes when I first looked on the list of supported kit for this kind of setup, I think the jbod in the article was the only on on it