Storage for Hyper-V?

[dbuckprsd]

Hi,

Due to the responses from my previous thread (VMWare of Hyper-V?), I have decided to move toward Hyper-V. Thanks.

 

Next question is storage. In my previous VMWare installations, we used a SAN for all virtual server storage.

I have read a few articles that state that SAN storage is no longer a necessity, that people are doing fine with less expensive NAS solutions.

 

Since I am on a really tight budget for this project, I am wondering if any of you have this same opinion? If so, what should be my performance expectations, and/or any other items that need to be considered.

Also, what brands/models of NAS devices have worked for you?

 

Thanks again.

[dhicks]

Next question is storage. In my previous VMWare installations, we used a SAN for all virtual server storage. I have read a few articles that state that SAN storage is no longer a necessity, that people are doing fine with less expensive NAS solutions.

 

You don't have to have centralised storage (a SAN/NAS device), you can use local storage in your servers. It saves having to buy a central storage device in the first place, and even if you do wind up spending a bit more on the individual servers (decent RAID controller, more disks), it's generally still less than a dedicated SAN device. We use DRBD to mirror block devices between local storage on our three XenServer machines, but using Hyper-V you can put your VMs on a Storage Spaces drive and have Windows take care of replicating storage between them. That way, you have a live, ready-to-go backup of each VM on a second machine, so in case of hardware failure or maintainance you can easily migrate to another server, plus you get local storage performance without any latency or overhead.

[kevin_lane]

Qnaps storage devices are pretty good however you should plan for any growth

[SHimmer45]

+1 for using local storage.

the live migration feature is nice as well, Veam also do a free edition of their backup software (i installed it the other day) which provides a nice interface but is from what i can see just backup up the VHD (which hyper-v can do anyway)

[tmcd35]

If I was rebuilding from scratch now, I think I'd go for local storage and use Hyper-V Replica to mirror VM's between hosts for failover. It's not 100% but good enough for this environment.

 

Central storage does make failover and load balancing a lot easier to manage. One option for central storage, which is the route we went down a few years ago, is a Windows server with SMB shares on a separate network to the main LAN.

[localzuk]

If you want centralised storage but don't want a full SAN, you can use a simple Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 box. Hyper-V supports SMB3.0 now, which means you can just create a share and point Hyper-V machines at it.

 

You can increase redundancy by having 2 windows servers connected to a single dual-homed JBOD also, if that's something you want.

[woodham]

local storage and hyper-v replication between hosts disks are really cheep even enterprise class ones

[smithson83]

We have two Hyper-V hosts, both equal, both up to running the entire VM set. We use local storage on the two Dell R720's and replicate the VM's from one to the other using HyperV-Replica.

 

the replications are quick, the servers are responsive and we've never had an issue

 

we are a 400 pupil Primary with ~300 machines.

[VeryPC_Ed]

If you want centralised storage but don't want a full SAN, you can use a simple Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 box. Hyper-V supports SMB3.0 now, which means you can just create a share and point Hyper-V machines at it.

 

You can increase redundancy by having 2 windows servers connected to a single dual-homed JBOD also, if that's something you want.

 

I've run a few test setups with Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and SMB 3.0 internally and it's a definite alternative to the traditional option of using ISCSI shared storage, seems to be much simpler and the performance has been really good (moar nics!) and keeps costs low.

 

A good post about the scale out file server / Hyper-V (and website for all things Hyper-V is Aidan Finn's blog - Yes, You Can Run A Hyper-V Cluster On Your JBOD Storage Spaces | Aidan Finn, IT Pro - he's one of the Microsoft Virtualization MVP's)

 

Let me know if you want any quotes on storage !

 

Ed

[localzuk]

I've run a few test setups with Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and SMB 3.0 internally and it's a definite alternative to the traditional option of using ISCSI shared storage, seems to be much simpler and the performance has been really good (moar nics!) and keeps costs low.

 

Yup. Its what we're running here. Works very nicely! It allowed us to have properly tiered storage without needing to buy full trays of storage for a SAN - so we've got a mix of SSD, SAS and SATA as our storage solution, in a single storage tray (something I've not come across from SAN makers, or didn't at the time anyway).

[VeryPC_Ed]

Yup. Its what we're running here. Works very nicely! It allowed us to have properly tiered storage without needing to buy full trays of storage for a SAN - so we've got a mix of SSD, SAS and SATA as our storage solution, in a single storage tray (something I've not come across from SAN makers, or didn't at the time anyway).

 

We've been supplying ISCSI SAN's with mixed storage in for ages as it's one of the big selling points for us is that we don't just box shift a chassis with X disk in them off the shelf, we try to help people tier data where possible - saves cash and gives better performance !!

 

Ed